


King and Lionheart

by HomunculusJim



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Alien Biology, Angst, BDSM, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Boot Worship, Canon-Typical Violence, Dom/sub, Emotional Constipation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Peter, Kink Negotiation, Kraglin Whump, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Mostly T-rated, Parent Yondu Udonta, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Underage Sex, Porn With Plot, Praise Kink, Self-Lubrication, Slow Burn, Space Battles, Subdrop, Subspace, Unhealthy Relationships, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Worldbuilding, the slowest of burns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-01-06 23:14:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 53,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12220935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HomunculusJim/pseuds/HomunculusJim
Summary: Kraglin Obfonteri is a nobody. A miner from a colony, who expects to die the same way he lived - alone. Then Yondu Udonta crashlands in his life.Udonta brings a small Terran tagalong, a promise of adventure, and a chance to explore the stars. But following the captain is a dangerous path, and Kraglin soon finds himself out of his depth.





	1. Deep Shafted

**Author's Note:**

> Some notes before we begin!
> 
> 1) This is a _very_ problematic story. It stars two people who are both arguably ex-slaves, who get embroiled in a not-so-healthy BDSM relationship.
> 
> 2) Following on from this, the BDSM is not wholly safe, sane, or (in one incident) consensual
> 
> 2) With regards to this incident: Yondu ignores a 'no' before they fully figure out safewords. Kraglin gets hurt as a result. Very little actually happens, but it still shakes Kraglin up, and has ramifications on their relationship. This chapter will be fully marked and will contain appropriate warnings. There is a summary at the start of the chapter, if you wish to skip.
> 
> 3) I like the idea that Kraglin is some other race than Xandarian, but I wanted to put a new twist on it – hence 'Nazghian'. I also like the idea that Kraglin was a miner, but haven't seen it explored in depth. This fic fills that hole (eeeey).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I decided to smarten this fic up a bit before I continue - which means compressing the chapters. I like to publish short chapters, as it's easy for editing, but prefer to read long ones. Enjoy!

Whitefinger was what they called it.

Technically, it was caused by the vibration of the hydraulic jackhammers: a battery on the capillaries that left the hands prone to sudden spasms in the cold. But Kraglin knew it like the other miners knew it - as a sign you had reached the end of your half-life, and it was all downhill from here.

_Twenty years down, twenty to go. If the Lung doesn't get you, the rock falls will._

Kraglin clenched and unclenched one corpse-stiff fist. The returning bloodflow filled his hand with needlepoints, stabbing away like the jackhammer chisel through rock.

Today he'd been hewing adamantium for the Grober Weapons Confederation.

Tomorrow, he'd be doing the same - as he would be the day after, and the next, until they whittled this space-rock to a hollow shell, collapsing under its own gravity.

Then and only then would their rig uproot in search of fresh prey. Adamantium was worth more than a miner's fingers – or a miner himself, for that matter.

Awareness of one's mortality made every man reassess his place in the galaxy. But whereas a Xandarian’s midlife crisis resulted in the purchase of swanky sports-spaceships and lots of good-natured ribbing about compensation, Kraglin had decided to kill something.

That something was a man named Mamet. He could've been Kraglin if you shaved off three years and added a few extra inches. 

This, of course, made Kraglin detest the kid all the more.

Mamet was a snivelling thing. Pathetic, really. Most children shed tears on their first drop, as they plunged into the gloom under the asteroid's surface. But when their group of Breaker Boys had been herded onto a chain lift for their first trip down the shaft, Kraglin had remained tight-lipped and whey-faced as they fell, and Mamet had  _bawled_.

Which, in Kraglin's opinion, made it wholly unfair that he'd skipped a vital stage in the Nazghian self-promotion model.

Last Standard, Mamet had broken the unspoken rules of the Nazghian work ethic. He’d squirrelled away enough units to discard his Hurrying Helmet and invest in a loupe.

A Hurrying Helmet was the mark of a Nazghian's graduation from the ranks of the Breaker Boys, to the hunched creatures who ran carts up and down the passageways that linked the stope tunnels to the shaft, pushed by the crown of their head. Nazghians wore their helmets until they could swing a pickax instead.

Like the rest of his species, Kraglin had spent his formative years crammed down tunnels too shallow for even a runt like himself to stand upright in, shoving carts along their rollers and swearing when they got stuck. When that happened, as it inevitably did, there was nothing to do but heave and sweat, and pray to the wraiths of dead Hewers past that the wheels would loosen before the oncoming rumble swelled from noisy to deafening, and he was smudged between truckloads of crude ore and gangue.

Also like the rest of his race, Kraglin had a groove along the center of his crown, front to back, from where that helmet had dug in. It would be with him until the Lung caught up and he was abandoned in a dark corner of the shaft to await the airlock curfew.

Most miners didn't care. They shaved their heads, showing that ridge off to the world. They knew their lot; they knew their death rates. They'd accepted them long ago. What other choice did they have?

Kraglin cultivated a Mohawk. It was his sole defining feature, besides his stunted height, amid a sea of identical faces. This was because Kraglin, unlike any other Nazghian he knew, was determined to get the fuck off this mining rig and never look back.

 

* * *

 

When the gong rang, it reverberated through every implanted comm unit, from the Foremen overseeing the winding drums, to the Quarrymen and the Sawyers grinding their lathes in the open pit, to the Breaker Boys bowed over their conveyer belts and the Hewers and the Hurriers far below.

Feeding times were regular and always adhered to. Whatever your ranking, you were expected to nourish yourself.

Nazghians didn't store much in the way of body fat, even if the average adult male was several hands Kraglin's taller. They required regular sustenance to keep their strength up. The Company had no interest in men who couldn't work, and starved husks found it difficult to swing a pick.

Dinner was a regimen repeated with such regularity that it had become rote: as mechanical as the drills that bored into the asteroid's flanks, anchoring the rig around it like a chainmail coat. Before the gong had finished wobbling into the eardrums of every man, woman, and recently-employed Nazghian child, the low-tunnellers had pulled their bars from their jumpsuit. They tore off the biodegradable packaging, tossed it over their shoulders in an undulating wave of upflung arms, and chomped down on their ration of concentrated nutrient-paste, while miles above, the Foremen and Appraisers broke from their production chain and headed for the rig's canteen.

The Appraisers were lucky sods. They stayed on the surface, far from the cave-ins and the noxious gases and the carcinogenic dust. They oversaw the Breaker Boys, examining each chunk of crystal – or gold, or metal ore – as it was extracted from the gangue. The loupes they wore chained to their belt-loops were the tools of their trade.

It was a sweet job. Cushy, by Nazghian standards.

If you made it to Appraiser before the whitefinger got you, you were almost guaranteed to live into your fifties – practically geriatric!

So in all honesty, Mamet had the right idea.

He'd elected to slave for a few additional years at the push carts before purchasing his loupe from the commissary, rather than emptying his coffers into a pickax aged sixteen, as Kraglin had done, and most other Hewers before him. He'd thought it all out, planned it all through. He'd suffered the jeers and the taunts from the Hewers – Hewers like Kraglin, who whacked him on the head-dent for tardiness, and joked about him getting stuck in the tunnels and dying crushed sure as a minesquito under boot-treads, if he didn't earn his pickax within the year.

Now, karma dictated, he got to lord it over them instead.

Well, not if Kraglin had anything to do with it.

Mamet needed to die. It was a matter of pride.

The Appraisers stretched out their arms. They cracked their necks and blinked at the bright solars, which projected with foglight force from the overhead rig. And then, in practiced synchrony, each Appraiser tucked his or her loupe safely back in their pocket.

All but one.

As his companions peeled from the quarry, past the grumbling conveyor belts, wet with the remains of the last Breaker Boy who'd gotten tangled, Mamet patted himself down.

His first pass over his regulation jumpsuit was calm. His second, frowning. Third, fourth, and fifth were made with growing frenzy.

Mamet dropped to his hands and knees, scrabbling in the dirt under his work station, carding desperately through the dust like he was trying to dig a new drop-shaft.

Lose your loupe and you lost everything. 

You were a Hurrier until you bought a pick. Then you were a Hewer until you earned your loupe, and an Appraiser until you squirrelled away enough chits to afford your Mason's chisel, and then your Foreman's hat, after which you were packed off to the engineering hospital to have data-chips implanted, which would feed the ins and outs of every piece of equipment aboard your Locomotive Astral Mining Rig directly into your frontal lobe.

Lose your loupe though? Instant demotion. You were back to the mines until you could buy another from the commissary. As each lens cost an entire annual paycheque, not including the quota the company insisted you put aside for ration bars and water and other such necessities, to mislay one was the height of idiocy.

To steal one? Practically murder.

Kraglin reclined on a nearby rock. He basked under the solars.

The warmth and heat mimicked that of an orbitant star, something Kraglin, whose skin was pigmented only by mine-dust, rarely felt. An articulated strut arched overhead, swooping down to end with a drillbit, hooked far below the asteroid's crust.  

His pick rested against his boot. Kraglin patted first it, then the hard lump in his pocket, and smirked.

 

* * *

 

 

Nazghian mining rigs were spindly things, much like the Nazghians themselves. But, also like the Nazghians, they were far tougher than they looked. 

They floated through space, trawler-nets of scaffold and primed drill-pieces, so thin that they could barely be seen from the side. But when their scanners located an asteroid with promising elemental concentrations, those web-like wings unfurled.

They engulfed it, closed like a clenching fist, wrapping the tumbling rock in a steel embrace.

The Nazghians rarely bothered with terraformation. Instead, they calibrated their oxygen and gravity generators to make the asteroid's surface habitable, permeating to where the minerals were rich and the mine-yield high. To save on costs, operations ground to a halt every night, when the atmospheric forcefield dissipated.

Everything beyond the rig's airlocks fell to silence, from the screams of the depressurizing who hadn't quite made it, to the constant crash of rocks and picks that filled Kraglin's days.

The roar of the drills had been his reveille for all two-ish decades of his life. Lore suggested that Nazghians were born with earplugs clasped in their bony little hands. As Kraglin had never had the pleasure of knowing his birth parents – the concept of a  _family_ was rather outdated, when your species had dedicated itself to becoming a industrial-scaled mining machine – for all he knew, it was true. 

But even those greasy, absorbent buds couldn't dampen the grind of the drills. Not entirely.

So when the M-ship shrieked through the sky, coming in hot enough to leave a bright streak on Kraglin's vision, he saw the smoke from its misfiring engine long before he heard the crackling fire, or the screech of buckling hull plates as it dove nosecone first into the earth.

Kraglin dug a finger in his ear and hooked out the bud.

Sound rushed in.

It drowned the stutters and squawks from his comm-implant, as the Foremen processed their shock and began to squabble over who was in charge of dealing with this.

Drills wound down. Their high whirr deepened, losing its smooth tessitura. The noise became juddery and atonal, each revolution slower than the last. Rock settled under the M-ship's nosecone, which had plowed into the ground not fifty feet from the headframe.

If you wrote off the crumple-zone, her underbelly didn't look too beaten. She was still space-worthy at least, although much of the outer panelling had been lost. As for whoever had been piloting it...

The cockpit was empty.

Glassy and rotund, its window panes were smoother than any rock Kraglin knew. His ears weren't sharp enough to pick out the rumble of an opening hatch, not against the background noise. But there was no mistaking the man who stormed out, hollering for the Foreman.

He was big.

Not nearly so vast as the stories would have you believe. But big nevertheless, broad in a way Nazghians wouldn't be if you forcefed them double-rations for a month, stocky and stout as a mining drill. 

His blue stood out against the dirt-mottled Nazghian workforce. And there was no mistaking that arrow. It flitted around his head as if it were sewing invisible lace, far too dainty for the man storming through the Appraisers' ranks, ire on his rugged blue face.

Yondu Udonta.

An outlaw among pirates, a demon among demons. A man who took on armies and strolled away without a scratch.

The hell was he doing here?

And why had he brought a Terran _?_

As he stalked through their base, shoving at anyone who tried to stop him and  _whistling_ at those who were insistent, he seemed to grow with every step.

Logically, Kraglin knew he was feeling residual quakes from the impact. But it still seemed like the rocks were bouncing under each of Udonta's footfalls, as if he were a giant who could rattle the ground with his boots.

Kraglin was a creature of the earth. When it shook, so did he.

He forgot about the loupe in his pocket. He forgot that he was supposed to be awaiting his Foreman, so that he could be chewed out and sent to stew in the deepest and darkest of this asteroid's deep dark pits. He almost forgot the pickax – the one which, should he lose it, would sentence him to a suffocating demise between Hurrier carts (or worse yet: bent over conveyors with the child workers, being diced to shreds when his whitefinger-numbed hands got tangled in the belt).

He almost forgot it. But not quite.

Kraglin swung his pick up and over. The thump on his back was familiar as the quasi-deafness, as he jammed his earplug in far enough to tickle wax. Why wait around to be disciplined when he could saunter after Udonta, and watch the madness unfold?

 

* * *

 

 

One M-ship wasn’t enough of a threat to fire on – hence why Udonta and his Terran made it to the surface. But that M-ship harbored a Ravager captain and his radioactive arrow. It zipped through the Quarrymen with liquid ease, as if their bodies were vapors from the mine-vents: bilious geysers which stank of hot rock and rotten eggs.

Was Kraglin the only one who noticed Udonta placing himself between the workforce and the boy? Kraglin hoped so.

He didn’t have a chance against Udonta, but a hostage might give him time to rig an escape pod. If this turned nasty, Kraglin was snatching the kid before any other Nazghian got the chance.

However, it didn’t come to that. Neither side wanted this to escalate into an all-out arrow-versus-pickax brawl. The quarriers who’d lunged at Udonta had been injured, but not mortally; they clutched punctured shoulders and shins, holes stinking of well-cooked meat.

“Anyone else?” Udonta yelled.

They couldn't hear him. He wasn't wired into the internal comm system, which delivered the vibrations of each miner's vocal cords directly to the eardrums of everyone within signal range. However, they all got the gist – it was impossible not to, when you had a blue brick of a man brandishing his arrow, overcoat shining sebaceous under the strip-lights.

“Alright! Listen up – here's how this's gonna go down!”

Udonta explained his plan, first with speaking, then with shouting, then with a form of sign language incompatible with the finger-spelling used by miners when their earpieces were on the fritz. Finally, he conveyed his message with the aid of a captive Foreman, a big jotter PADD, and a stylus.

Kraglin was first to volunteer. He didn't even need a whistle for motivation. He'd been looking for a chance, waiting for fate to drop something new in his lap.

And finally,  at long, very long last, that something had arrived.

The quarrymen weren't so enthusiastic. The majority were dispatched to battle stations in a surly gaggle, the Foreman’s orders ringing in their comm-chips.

She craned away from Udonta, wrist in a cuff of blunt blue fingers. The arrow tip rotated close enough to brush the palpitating blood vessel under her left ear.

Kraglin understood. Who would want to turn their canons on an advancing Kree battalion, when they could hand over their target, avoid confrontation, and return to the mines in time to make their daily quota? But today, that target was Yondu Udonta: a blue-faced, red-eyed menace, tales of whose swashbuckling had percolated the deepest chutes.

Kraglin could vouch. He was banished there five weeks out of ten, to the tunnels which sunk for miles under the asteroid's crust, sometimes so deep that they met boreholes from the other side. These 'gravity tubes' were truly bottomless, given that both ends registered as 'up'. Lifts could free-fall, and bounce to rest mid-air. It was nauseating and panic-inducing, even after your fiftieth rodeo, and should the drop-time from either side be miscalculated...

Well. Crunch.

Deep-shafters had a lower life expectancy than average. Most Nazghian miners croaked in their forties, preferably after procreating. But the deep-shafters rarely got that chance.

It was an effective means of weeding bad traits from the gene pool. Disobedience, rebellion, snarling at authority...

No wonder Kraglin spent so much time underground.

Kraglin was due to be shipped back there as soon as this latest folderol blew over. He was only on the surface by fluke – waiting to receive his biweekly lecture about how fights in the shafts led to cave ins, ruptured tanks of blasting jelly, and repeats of that N-Stope Incident he'd been involved in as a first-year Hewer, the one that still had him jolting awake mid-cycle, ghost-white and slick with fear-sweat, the rumble of a collapsing mine in his ears.

If he got in a fight, the death toll might exceed him and his victim. Gaps would open in the work roster – gaps that it would cost the Nazghian conglomerate to replace.

Apparently, that was something he was supposed to care about.

Kraglin didn't. And, as he'd been told many times, that was his problem.

The miners were free to leave. At least, that was what the Foremen reassured any Nova operatives who bleated about things like _humane working conditions_ and _the right to form a union._ A miner's contract wasn't binding.

But you'd never find employment on another rig if you walked, and few places hired species listed in the Encyclopedia Galactica as ‘glorified worker ants’ (albeit in more politically correct language). A deserter's choice of occupation ranged from 'grunt for the Grober Weapons Confederation' to ‘prostitute’ or 'petty criminal'.

Kraglin cocked his head at the flame on Udonta's chest. The child's eyes latched onto him for a moment before he glanced up and away, absorbing the rig in a slack-jawed sweep.

Perhaps, Kraglin thought, chewing on his latest hangnail, that job list extended to 'Ravager'?

 

* * *

 

All satellites kept a stocked artillery, even fully mobile ones. They couldn't rely on the Nova to defend them.

Even if the Corps ships ran regular patrols along the trade routes, miners journeyed further afield. They roamed the belts where asteroids swarmed like tunnel-wasps and the comets dripped with minerals, from adamantium and vibranium to beryl and silica and zinc.

It was unwise to venture beyond Novaspace unarmed. Not when there were Ravagers stalking No Man’s Space, and planet-eaters gestating in the voids between occupied systems.

Or, as in this case, when Kree warships were closing in.

The battle wouldn't be easy. However, it wasn't their first gig.

Miners spilled from the quarry, grins the brightest parts of their faces. Technically, they were supposed to stay below the surface - but even the Foremen had to admit it was better to die in gunfire than crushed under rubble in a lightless pit.

Exhilaration made Kraglin tense as if his skin had been wrapped around electrical wires. He ran to a drill-mounted turret, swinging himself into the gunner’s seat, and squeezed his trigger when Udonta roared _fire._

The boom was loud enough to be heard through his earplugs _._

As his shots strewed across the sky, cleaving ships mid-air, contrails of ash and fire striping his vision, Kraglin thought, for the first time in living memory: _this is where I'm supposed to be._

 

* * *

 

 

All in all, it was over far too fast.

Fun things tended to be. Kraglin didn't have much fun in his life, so he relished the memory of the gun turret juddering underneath him.

The painful bloodlessness of his fingers hadn’t been enough to jar him from the thrill, as he burst ship after ship, spewing laserfire in ruddy gouts.

When the Kree ships had been scattered to fine-glinting smithereens, Udonta let the kid untuck from his armpit. He'd been watching the battle with the trust of a child at a firework festival, convinced that the flashes and bangs couldn't hurt him.

Nazghian children didn't attend festivals. The closest they came to entertainment was drumming along to old miner-songs. The songs were a fragment of culture from the days before interstellar operations, when the Nazghians had been subsistence-diggers, farming subterranean mosses and larvae far below their planets' toxic surface.

They weren't allowed to sing anymore. Too much danger of drowning out an order. But you could never silence a rhythm.

While Kraglin couldn’t recall the words unless he was in the moment, chanting along with a hundred other voices, there was a collective memory there. Something ancestral and ancient, stretching as far back as their species did, hammering along to the beat in his chest, the swing of his pick, the grind of rock on rock.

Kraglin examined the child. He was grubby and under-showered in the way of most spacefarers – water was a cherished resource in the black. But despite the dirt on his cheeks, the boy seemed safe. Contented. Well-fed.

Kraglin thought to his own childhood, as the runt of a Nazghian litter. He'd been the boy they fed into the conveyor belts when they jammed, in the hopes he'd be able to unclog the blockage and wriggle out before he was minced.

It took a simple juxtaposition of his past on the Terran's present for Kraglin to decide he didn't like him.

Udonta was another matter.

He popped out the Foreman's noise cancellation buds. She was taller than Kraglin, taller than Udonta too. Of a height with the Nazghian average rather than Kraglin's own stunted form.

She couldn't break Udonta's grip – wouldn't dare anyway. The arrow twitched in time with her pulse.

Udonta used her as his amplifier. She repeated his words over the tannoy, as he asked whether any able-bodied Nazghians were willing to ditch their picks and their loupes, strip their reflective miner-jackets, and take the Ravager flame. He couldn't promise them a higher wage, or a longer lifespan.

But what he did offer – excitement, opportunities to cause mayhem, a break from the clank a pick made when it struck wall, a sound more maddening to Kraglin than water-torture? That was enough.

Only a handful took him up. To Kraglin's disappointment, Mamet was among them. He nearly forked over the loupe there and then, anything to exhort the idiot into staying.

But hey – what did it matter? Mamet might not be a runt like Kraglin, but that didn't make him any tougher. He'd barely survived his years as a Hurrier; he wouldn't last the week as a space pirate.

If Kraglin had to see to that personally, so be it.

 

* * *

 

 

Their comm implants stuttered, but the lag time increased the further the shuttle flew out of range of the rig's broadcast system. By the time they entered the jump point, the ghostly whispers of miners and foremen had long since faded.

On the other side waited the Ravager galleon.

It wasn't the first ship of its size Kraglin had seen. The mining rig had windows, which a runty Breaker Boy had once pushed onto his toes to see out of, nose squashed against the glass.

It was equally by no means the most magnificent vessel: a rusted industrial block of a ship, jagged and irregular as fresh-sliced ore. If Kraglin couldn't see the lights dotting its underside, twinkling through the haze of engine exhaust and ejected biomatter, he would've mistaken it for derelict.

“Here we go,” grunted Udonta to his new recruits. He was piloting, as no Nazghian knew how, and had banished all twelve of them to the main hold – presumably to conserve distance between the ranks. His Terran shared the cockpit with him.

Kraglin wondered what his job description was.

Cabin boy? Powder monkey?

Catamite?

Udonta cranked on the autopilot, tramping down the ladder-steep cockpit steps without using the handrails. He seemed attuned to the faint buffets of cosmic radiation, which lashed out at them as sunspots swirled across the nearest star.

“Feast yer eyes, boys an' girls,” he said, clapping his hands. “This here's yer new home.”

Kraglin, crushed against the porthole by the bodies to either side, did so.

He breathed fog onto the glass and scrubbed it with the sleeve of his overalls. A gungy rind grew over every surface, made from recycled particulates from the oxygenerator. It spread like mold, starting in pockets and creeping out, vanquishable only with solvents and a scrubbing brush.

Kraglin's cuff only smeared it. But if he squinted through the streaks, he could make out the details: the flotilla of M-ships that hovered around the galleon like mine-squitos in a humid shaft; the green-white foxfire that clung to the thruster pits; the name branded in block capitals over her hull, which was as dented and pockmarked as the asteroids Kraglin farmed.

“The  _Ecelector,_ ” he breathed, as Udonta repeated the same in a showman's boom.

Had he looked over his shoulder, he would've found quite the scene. The Terran stood behind Udonta, mimicking him silently with a bombastic spread of his arms, while the Nazghians muttered to themselves, shuffling their feet as they debated whether laughter was permitted, and Mamet did his best not to cry.

 

* * *

 

 

The weirdest thing about abandoning one walk of life and embarking on another wasn't the alterations to your routine. It was how quickly you fell into new ones.

Kraglin was an adaptable creature. You had to be, in the mines – acclimatize from the Breaker Boy conveyor belts to the Hurrier carts too slowly, and they'd be sponging your remains off the back of a wagon before the year was out.

It was strange, dropping his earbuds into his pocket and knowing he wouldn't have to wedge them in come lights-on. He couldn't bring himself to throw them away. Never knew when a noise cancellation set would come in handy.

It was equally strange, waking to a buzzer rather than a growling drill.

It was  _definitely_ strange being given food for free, when before he'd had to factor it into his budget. In the mines, each protein bar was a drain that reduced his chances of ever affording that loupe.

...Well, the food wasn't free. Nothing was  _free._ Not in this galaxy. Udonta's second – Tullk, thickset and scowly and known for being brutally fair – gave them the rundown of wage break-ups in the morning, clambering onto a table in the mess hall and clapping for their attention.

“You won't get paid as much as you would in the Corps,” he said. The Nazghians shovelled their slops with relish, enjoying the novelty of hydrated food.

He had a funny accent, soft-like. Kraglin tapped his ear to make sure there wasn't still a bud stuffed in there.

But no, he could hear the crunch of gristle in their gruel, the scrape of chairs across the dirty floor, the clatter of new bowls as they skidded down tubes from the galley, and used ones which were sent back again. Every sound resounded in high definition after a lifetime of numbness.

It was disorientating and, if Kraglin were of a less hardy constitution, it would have played hell on his nerves.

Mamet sat at the far end of the table. He had his knees drawn to his chest as if he would very much like to bury his head between them.

Kraglin rubbed the loupe in his pocket and smiled.

Tullk continued:

“But this's because a fraction of all our wages go back to keep this 'ere girl -” He treated the wall to a hollow-sounding pat. “-Flying with thrusters an' all. Highest salary isn't more than double what you make, and that's captain's, so no point crying for a pay rise.”

Kraglin nodded along with the rest. When Tullk asked if they had any questions, his was the only hand to raise.

“Go on, kid.”

“When do we go on missions?”

Kraglin had been stuck on a rig his whole life. He'd seen no more of the galaxy than your average Xandarian brat.

He knew he was missing out – had known for years. The knowledge gnawed at the fringes of his mind, like the jealousy he'd felt for Mamet, and every other Nazghian born with the potential to top seven foot.

Tullk chuckled. “You ever fought with a blaster pistol, boy?”

“Course I have. Better with knives though.”

It wasn't often a wannabe-thief made it to the rig, looking to scrounge gold from the source. None succeeded. If there was one thing that could spur a Nazghian into rage, it was threats to their mine-yield.

Or, in Kraglin's case, an insult about the carrier he'd never known, or a comment on his lacking height, or the accidental bump of a pick against his helmet, or the frustration when a fellow Hewer cracked a soft rock seam with his drill and filled the entire cave with choking, hazardous dust. That was when his knives emerged.

Temperamental miners were classified as Bad Assets. Kragliin didn't much care – he never laid any claims on being a good one.

Back in the present, Tullk patted his holster. “Knives ain't gonna do much use in a firefight, boy. We'll test you out on targets first, then let you join big busts before you get solos. That answer your question?”

Kraglin nodded. He wondered, as he fingered the hilt in his sleeve, whether the captain would watch the try-outs in person.

 

* * *

 

The captain next showed his face at mess.

So did the Terran, who stayed so close to Udonta's coattails that Kraglin would've assumed he was his own, were it not for the difference in skin tone.

Kraglin never saw him alone. He was always accompanied by some retainer or another, selected from an exclusive handful of Bridge crew _._  

These were, in ranking order, Tullk: the quartermaster, in charge of recruitment and crew discipline. Trexi: chief gunner, who kept the  _Eclector's_ defences maintained. Volker: the one-eyed medic. Horuz: the engine overseer. Asqez: the blind, deaf and dumb comms officer (there was something delightfully ironic about that, although Kraglin didn't dare crack jokes at his expense). Head navigator Oblo.

The boy only appeared in conjunction with one of those faces, or with the captain himself.

Kraglin had heard he was cargo – rumor had it Udonta had broken those old Ogordian adages about dealing in children. But there were flame patches stitched on each small shoulder: one in a sure adult hand, the other messy as if the kid had insisted on doing it himself.

He danced so much, spinning on his heels with an antique-looking music box glued to his belt, that Kraglin got a good look at both.

This was no ransom-kid. He was a Ravager.

One of the new recruits – they'd been siphoning them up from each port stop, although Kraglin was too low in the pecking order to know  _why_  – had a different opinion.

“Look,” she chortled, nudging the shoulder of the guy she'd arrived with: a musclebound barrel whose face looked like the raw meat you might get after feeding a man through a thruster engine. “Lunch.”

The kid meeped and hid behind Udonta.

Udonta laughed. He patted him like a puppy and whistled her through, all in the same breath.

Fuck.

The girl's brains seeped into her porridge.

Kraglin, on the seat besides, surreptitiously spooned a glob from his bowl. He let it drip to the floor. 

“No one eats the kid!” Udonta hollered, dragging him out by the earlobe. “Unless I give the say-so! Goddit?”

The silence was peppered with quiet affirmations. Udonta's eyes remained fixed on the dead woman – or rather, her bulky companion.

Kraglin, close besides, was included in that glare by proxy. He wilted over his grits, expecting a pass of the arrow and another bloody splash from the side. 

But eventually, fry-face shouldered off the corpse.

“Yessir,” he grunted, although he didn't sound happy about it.

As Udonta returned to eating, striking up casual conversation with his Bridge crew and pulling the kid around to perch on the chair to his right, Kraglin leaned over the table between him and the big guy. His stiff, oversized leathers bit into his stomach.

“M'sorry,” he said, nodding to the girl. “You close?”

Fry-face snorted. “Not anymore.”

Kraglin wasn't good at this comforting crap. But hey - newbies oughta stick together.

“I'm Kraglin Obfonteri, friend. You got a name?”

“Taserface. And I ain't yer friend.”

“T-Taserface?”

Taserface's eyes narrowed. Or at least, Kraglin thought they did – the scars made it kinda hard to tell. “Something funny, squirt?”

Kraglin retracted the hand he'd stuck out to shake. “Nothin'.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Target practice took place after orientation week. Kraglin's intake never got a guided tour, but the ship specs were uploaded to their PADDs, rife with wayfinding symbols and hazard markings that flashed in case of fuel spillage or vacuum breach.

New recruits orienteered from one menial task to the next, because, in Tullk's words, there was no better way to learn.

The ship was arranged in layers around the captain's cabin and the Bridge, like the nacre that grew around an oyster.

The Bridge had no exterior-facing walls, only gleaming screens of radar read-outs that let the Bridge crew know what was going on without a big-ass window advertising their presence. The training rooms, in contrast, were housed in the cavernous loftspace on top deck.

They’d all arrived with time to spare. They didn’t know what happened to latecomers, and nobody wanted to find out.

Personally, Kraglin suspected that the manikin they were firing on would be swapped out for a more realistic model.

He stood near the back of the line. Udonta hadn't slacked on recruiting. Nazghians were a minority.

There were Shi'ar and Xandarians and Skrulls, species from across the quadrant. Their territory was narrow, but it extended along a trade route from the galactic core to its far-flung outskirts. It was a melting pot, and a regular smorgasbord of races could be found fighting, fornicating, and fermenting in their juices at every run-down bar.

Not that Kraglin would know anything about that. Last two times they docked, he – along with the rest of the fresh meat – had been confined to quarters.

But today, all of that would change.

Established crewmembers wore couture. Their leathers clung like a second skin and were so well-worn that they moved as one. Miles better than these stiff cardboard things that smelt of tanning solution and dead ruminant. A fitted uniform was a mark of seniority. First completed mission; that was when a man earned the flame on his sleeve.

Kraglin’s current garb stood away from him in a boxy rectangle. Hardly struck fear into hearts – especially not since he creaked when he walked.

And so. Target practice.

Mamet's shot sailed wide. He seemed relieved about it; the wuss.

Ahead of Kraglin, a Nazghian chick assumed her stance. She took the pistol from Taserface, who'd preceded her.

He had hit the mark – bullseye, dead on. His bolt struck the manikin’s chest hard enough to judder it on its mount. He tramped to join the ranks of successful crew with a scowl crinkling his fried-up face.

Or maybe that was the only expression he was capable of. Kraglin didn't know, and – while he eked some small amusement from his name – Kraglin didn't much care.

One shot each.

You started with the pistol holstered, and when Tullk roared  _draw_ you drew and fired in a single motion, no time for perfecting your aim.

Captain didn't say much. He was here for the show.

His shadow lurked by his side. Kraglin couldn't help but notice the pistol, child sized and decorated in a ridiculous custom color-combination of blue and orange, tucked in his belt.

Who was that boy?

Udonta didn't seem the type to indulge in child whores – but perhaps that was jealousy talking.

Not that Kraglin  _liked_ the guy. Didn't know him well enough, for a start. But, well. He liked power, and Udonta had that in spades.

The three of them stood side-by-side at the back of the range, exchanging the occasional word. They didn’t glance at any recruit for longer than it took to decree “pass” or “fail”.

Tullk handled the shouting. Udonta seemed more interested in polishing an infinite supply of baubles, pulled from his pockets, coat linings, and the belts strapping his sleeves; while the brat tapped his boots to the beat from his headphones, and broke away to perform the occasional pirouette.

Right happy little family, they looked.

“Draw!” Tullk shouted, making Nazghian-girl jump. Despite the false start, she nailed the target. Made of thermocromatic fiber, it absorbed plasma bolts rather than repelling them, and glowed brilliant vermillion when struck.

Someone had scrawled a smile on its face in indelible marker.

Kraglin found himself smiling too, as he stepped into place and rammed the pistol into his hilt. Nice to know someone on this ship had a sense of humor.

He was ready. Loose-muscled, jittery with anticipation. When Tullk shouted  _draw,_ he fired.

 

* * *

 

“Look, laddie. I already gave you your answer. It's a fail – now run along to the engine room. You can give it another go next try-out.”

“What?” Kraglin gestured to the target, as the segregated crew filed out of the room, passes on one side and fails on the other. “I hit him!”

Tullk sighed. “You clipped his arm. Woulda caused him mighty pain, but wouldnae have killed him. At least, not fast enough that he couldn't fire back.”

“But” -

“Rules is rules, kid.”

“I thought Ravagers weren't s'pposed to have them!”

It was a childish thing to say. Kraglin instantly berated himself for it.

The target hall had rapidly emptied. A few had stayed to quibble their verdicts, and Kraglin, small in the company of Skrull-hybrids and men who better suited to boxer rings than mine-crawling, had been shunted into last place.

Behind Tullk, watching the proceedings with one shoulder leant on the wall, the captain sniggered.

He didn't quite fade into the background with his lurid coloration and the authority he exuded, more potent than the fumes of BO and bad breath. But he wasn't the tyrant Kraglin had imagined either, stalking around the ship with a whistle on his lips and butchering anyone who forgot to smack their chest.

His pink eyes met Tullk's, scrunched from the breadth of his grin. “Aw. Widdle kiddo thinks he's in the Nova Corps.”

“I don't,” Kraglin tried, because the only thing worse than them brigging him for disrespect was being patronized. “I shouldn't have said that, it were dumb.”

“S'right, boy. Dumb's what you are, and dead's what you'll get if you head out into the field before you can shoot straight.”

Udonta pushed off the wall. He strolled towards him, closer and closer, until Kraglin was blinking down his nose. Udonta's smirking blue face hovered at at a proximity reserved for headbutts or kissing.

“Um,” he said.

Udonta's smile would be friendly if his eyeteeth weren't so sharp. His canines were like silver icebergs, bullets buried in his gums.

“Get outta my way,” he said, after Kraglin had stuttered for a good half-minute. “Here's a rule for ya, kid. Cap'n's walkin', you move.”

 _Jerk,_ Kraglin's mind filled in: the part of him which had never taken orders without scathing internal commentary.

But power wreathed Udonta like thunderclouds before a lightning strike. It was prickly and nitrus-laced and thrumming with latent charge. A bigger part of Kraglin, a part he didn't even know he had, wholeheartedly echoed the words that he managed to stammer as he stepped to the side.

“Y-y-yessir.”

“Good lad.” The squeeze – bestowed on Kraglin's right shoulder, firm enough to be felt through the pad – made the air in his lungs inadequate. Kraglin gasped another breath on full capacity, forgetting how to exhale.

“Sorry sir,” he mumbled. Udonta, already striding for the manikin at the range's far end, flapped a careless hand behind him.

“Nah, yer good. Remember for next time, and we don't got a problem. Now scat.”

If you got out the way when the captain walked, Kraglin was willing to bet that you followed his orders too. But this could be his only chance. Kraglin wasn't waiting another month only to miss again.

“Give me another shot,” he pleaded, as Udonta fished in his trenchcoat pocket, grunted, pulled out a weird orange doll (to a loud 'hey, I told you to quit stealing that!' from his pet Terran) and ferreted about until he located a highlighter.

The cap he popped off with his teeth, dropping it back into his pocket as he set the nib against the manikin’s face.

“You'll get yer shot, kid. Next astral-month, like all them others what failed. Ain't no favoritism on my ship – even if y'are mighty cute.”

“Sir,” said Tullk, sounding reproachful. Udonta rolled his eyes at him.

“ _Joking._ Alright kiddo – ain't tellin' ya twice.”

Kraglin didn't need to hear it twice either.

Shoulders hunched, defeat inscribed on the stoop of his spine, he trudged after the men, women and others who were being assigned on-ship duties. The ones who hadn't needed to contest their marks were being taken to the armories, and then the tailors after.

And as for Udonta, Tullk, and their Terran? Well.

Heat blossomed under Udonta's fingertips. His touch glowed a muted, rosy gold.

If he wasn't one of the most dangerous listings in the bounty books, after Stakar and Aleta Ogord, there might be something endearing in the way his tongue poked from the corner of his mouth, pen squeaking on the fabric as he reapplied the dummy's smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I greatly appreciate every comment and kudos.


	2. Graduation

Kraglin was assigned to the grease-head squad. This meant spending long hours in the boiler rooms, jumpsuit rolled to his waist and vest clinging to his sweaty ribs.

Pipes and furnaces and antique combustion engines gurgled on all sides. It was hot and stinking and _noisy._ Steam hissed through valves and copper distended from the heat, and plasma squirted from one reinforced glass canister to the next with a resonant squelch.

Thankfully, Kraglin hadn’t tossed his earbuds.

Ravagers cannabilized every ship they outflew. They chomped through their hull plates and gorged themselves on the juicy goodies within.

If it worked, it was used. If it didn’t, it was smelted down for scrap.

As a result, their tech was a jumble of old and older, of cranky and downright uncooperative. The _Eclector_ might fly on quadruple-pump fusion generators, like every other self-respecting trans-stellar ship in the galaxy. But her internal mechanics could be carbon-dated from the previous Standard all the way back to the last Astral Century.

When they broke, no amount of button mashing would help. You had to fix them up close and personal.

Unfortunately, Kraglin’s build made him a top candidate.

It took him back to his Breaker Boy days: feeding his arm inside a jammed pump as he’d once fed it into a conveyer belt, holding his breath as he groped about for the blockage and praying he withdrew a whole limb rather than a stump.

All in all, there were as many ways to die on-ship as off it.

Kraglin did his best to avoid them.

He was deployed on missions – but they involved broken shower nozzles and light panels that turned off when they weren’t supposed to. Rather than holsters, his utility belt housed multi-gadgets, lugnuts, wrenches, and wire clamps: the tools of his trade.

Practical learning was on-the-job. In that way, Ravaging resembled the mines. Unlike in the mines though, you didn't buy your way up to the next level, feeding your wages back into the company in a never-ending profit loop.

If Kraglin wanted to progress, he had to study the fusion engines in his spare time, learning how atoms collided and split.

The most complex algorithms were taken care of digitally. All Kraglin did was repair things when they went wrong. You didn't need a mathematician's grasp of algebra to know which button would stop the chain reaction and which made the whole ship go kaboom.

It was still hard work. Especially by Kraglin's standards – he hadn't flexed his mental muscles since completing the mandatory seven years of Nazghian state schooling.

But at the start of his second fortnight, as he downloaded the next chapter of the pirated data-pack Horuz recommended for all aspiring engineers, he realized he was enjoying himself.

What he enjoyed less was that Udonta hadn't looked at him since their clash in the firing range.

Hadn't spoken a word to him neither – besides orders, of course.

But while those orders were hollered at every given opportunity, Udonta was no Nova general. He didn't demand respect he didn't earn. Udonta led the charge rather than commanding from the side-lines; he wouldn’t kick up his feet while Ravagers spilled blood in his name.

Yes, Kraglin thought, licking his finger before flipping the holographic rendition of a page. His spit left static strings mid-air, shimmering like a sneeze on a computer screen.

Here was a captain he could follow.

Not like the foremen at the pit, whose attempts to discipline him were as laughable as their intimidation tactics. Udonta was the real deal.

He wore his authority with the same confidence with which he donned that stinking greatcoat in the morning. Its leather straps hung to his ankles, chains and buckles rattling like the baubles Kraglin spotted in the oddest places: perched on top of a waste chute in mess, blinking from the overhang in the shower block, pushed up Udonta's sleeves like talismans.

Kraglin turned another page.

He realized he had absorbed nothing from the one prior, and grumpily flicked back. The occupant of the bed above – a sallow, greasy-haired man with the unfortunate nickname 'Half-nut', the origins of which Kraglin didn't dare contemplate – grumbled in his sleep, twisting away from the light.

Kraglin readjusted his blanket tent with a mutter of apology.

He did his utmost to focus on the text. He reminded himself that he wanted this. Progression was a goal, and this was the best way to attain it.

But try as he might, his tired brain insisted that Udonta was far more interesting than the components of a fusion accelerator, categorized by order of flammability.

Specifically, Udonta's smile.

It was kinda gross, as smiles went.

Not because of mods or scaffolds or half a missing cheek (like the miners who'd been caught in the N-stope collapse, most of whom spent their remaining years making Kraglin's life a misery). Just a touch too colorful. His teeth were a mix of bronzes, silvers, and the odd carved lump of gold, engraved with an intricate pattern Kraglin had never gotten close enough to see.

Captain smiled a lot. He wore the same big beam whether he'd gathered the crew to announce a trip to Contraxia or an execution. But if he ever laughed, joked, and exchanged back slaps with a person, that person was part of the Bridge crew.

Not an engineer.

Never Kraglin.

Kraglin being Kraglin, and Kraglin being a petty little shit who, while understanding that everyone in the galaxy was a snowflake and that he was no more special nor interesting than any other man, decided to return the favor. 

No sense mooning after someone who didn't know he existed. Udonta probably received drunk confessions from half the crew. 

Half-nut moaned louder when Kraglin snapped off the PADD's backlight, hologram crumbling as the crystals depowered.

“Was just gettin' used to that -”

“Shaddup,” Kraglin hissed, knocking along his wall until he heard the hollow thud. “Folks're tryin' t'sleep.”

There was a lockable cubby above his bunk, hidden when the pallet folded flat to the wall. But locks could be cracked, just as the Personal Archival Data Devices (PADDs for short) could be flogged for a steep sum on the black market, especially those containing ship schematics.

First thing Kraglin had done was scout out his own hidey holes, the ones which weren't marked on any standard-issue map. This one had been gouged from the fluffy insulation fiber by the head of his pick axe.

That greeted him when he pried off the panel, lying alongside Mamet's loupe.

Kraglin propped the PADD on top of the pile. The projection crystal on its underside acted as a fulcrum; the PADD teetered over it like an unbalanced seesaw, before coming to rest against the wall of spongy piping.

There. Safe.

Now all he had to do was chase sleep, and not think of Captain Udonta until morning.

 

* * *

 

Eat. Sleep. Don't think about the captain.

Kraglin managed it for three whole weeks.

He did his job. He fulfilled his duties. When his second artillery review revolved around the astral-calendar, he aimed his plasma pistol where directed, and squeezed off a shot.

This time, it hit the mark.

He heard Udonta mutter a quiet 'pass', which Tullk took up and bellowed to bounce from the drooping, pipe-laden ceiling. Kraglin's heart contracted like his ribcage had caved from depressurization.

Udonta.

Oo-dohn-tar.

Three syllables that could be said in three thousand different ways.

Curt and clipped, each consonant enunciated.

Viscous as molasses, dulled to a slur.

He never tried to initiate contact with his captain. He kept his ears open and eyes peeled instead.

It was just self-preservation. That was all. The new recruits had already diminished (although Mamet was still kicking, much to Kraglin's displeasure). They'd been whittled away at by solo jobs and corrosive fuel spillages, as well as the captain himself.

Udonta had taken out three thus far: the woman in the canteen who'd threatened his pet Terran, and then a pair of Nazghians who’d been hauled out the airlocks for galley theft when the ship was running on low-rations between ports.

Ravagers stole from everyone, but not each other.

Yet another reason Kraglin couldn't wait to explore off-ship. His fingers got sticky, and it was only a matter of time...

Fear kept him in check, for the most part. Kraglin had seen what happened to those who pissed the captain off. They didn't walk away, mostly because they'd been relieved of their legs. 

That was his only reason for scouring data from every bounty-organization in the quadrant, scrolling to the lower end of the Xandarian Alphabet before all the click-consonants and A'askavarian squelches, and furtively checking over both shoulders before prodding Udonta's name.

Not because he was _fascinated_ with the guy, or anything. That would be stupid, and Kraglin was anything but.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Every man had their secrets. But Yondu Udonta, captain of the  _Eclector,_ the only Ravager to have broken Ogordian code and lived to tell the tale, starship hijacker extraordinaire, wanted in all four quadrants, and once-battle slave for the Kree Empire, had significantly more than most.

Kraglin crammed bolts into his pistol, whitefinger eroding his coordination.

Really, he thought, that list ought to sum Udonta up. From start to finish, every major event in his life was accounted for.

There was nothing that hadn't been recorded, either in the Kree annals, the bounty books, or the Xandarian records.

The Nova kept meticulous track of their most-wanted. All of Udonta's details, from his first recorded offence (butchering a Kree noble in the middle of a truce negotiation ceremony) to his gimcrack collection, had been logged in virtual data banks.

It was all there, free for the viewing.

Kraglin's bloodless hands spasmed; a plasma bead trundled for the table's edge. He caught it before it fell, canting his hips so it rolled to rest against dirty leather.

There was nothing like an exploding cartridge to ruin your day. If you were really unlucky, you wound up like Taserface.

Trexi, queen of the artillery, propped her hands on her hips and glared.

No sense blaming the whitefinger. Pleading for allowances would only earn scorn. Trexi would prescribe chopping off both hands and fitting mechanical replacements there and then.

While that was an  _option –_ certainly, after the N-stope collapse there'd been a lot of modded-miners, the lopsided stomp and clang of their peg legs echoing up the shaft – Kraglin felt queasy at the prospect.

His hands may not be perfect, but they were his. He kinda liked them.

He retrieved his bead. It was small and spherical, the consistency of a bath gel capsule (not that Kraglin had ever used one of those). A more familiar metaphor would be the medibeads every miner stockpiled in their pockets: sacs of fast-acting clotter and adrenaline that could be poured over wounds to prevent a man going into shock.

Kraglin slotted the cartridge into place.

He tested the pin on his fingertip. Sharp.

Flip off the safety and the bead would be punctured, the pistol chamber filled with superheated globs.

He was ready.

Trexi ushered them out of the armory, after tallying off every pistol and listing the punishments she'd mete out should any of them fail to return.

“Even damaged is better than gone,” she told them. “Cap'n's got something big planned; every weapon counts.”

Something big?

It wasn't Kraglin's place to ask. He was one redcoat among hundreds. He didn't need to know; his job description was to point at targets and fire on command.

Anyway, he was more interested in the captain himself.

The man was a conundrum. He was more perplexing than any puzzle on the engineering PADD.

Trinket collector, wanted by the Kree, outcast by Ogord? Kraglin knew all that.

But there was knowing, and then there was  _knowing._  Every snippet of information was second-hand: scrounged from rumors and wanted posters rather than the man himself.

Kraglin had known Udonta for ten weeks. Ten weeks and five jobs. Each of the latter was spent in a near-trance, watching him fight.

The zip of that arrow, embroidering the air, was alluring as a hypnotist's pendulum. The man's ability to plow through an army without raising a sweat was the most erotic thing Kraglin had seen, outside the pleasure ports he glimpsed through the portholes, where cyborgs gyrated over neon brothel signs in jerky three-bit animations.

It was a shame really, that Udonta shone so brightly. He couldn't see those who watched him for his own blinding light.

Tullk escorted the Ravagers to the M-ship dock. He snapped for them to look lively and keep sharp, and cuffed Kraglin when he disobeyed.

“C'mon, boy. Quit daydreaming. It'll only get you dead out there.”

Kraglin agreed. He removed his rose-tinted goggles to the best of his ability, patted his pistols (and out of reflex, his knives) and nodded.

They tramped to the hangar, a duckling-line of redcoats.

Udonta was waiting. He stood tall, hands clasped behind his back, smirk ugly as a dustbin fire and about as smelly.

He waved Tullk away. The rest of the Bridge crew were nowhere to be seen.

That was unsurprising. Trexi would be obsessively polishing their fingerprints from her arsenal right about now, and Kraglin supposed a chain of command needed to be maintained on the galleon as well as in the field.

As for the kid? He was absent too.

Kraglin had picked up his name from Udonta's raspy bawls of “Quill! Getcher tush out here before I stick it with my arrow!”, which bellowed about the ship whenever the boy wedged himself up a vent pipe.

As far as Kraglin knew, Quill only accompanied them on safe missions. Thefts and the like, where small bodies were assets and minimal bloodshed was required. 

This bust? Not like that. Not like that at all.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Someone wealthy expressed interest in disrupting a slave ring. They were willing to pay big bucks for the Kree master's head.

It was all to spite a financial rival; this was no act of charity. But hey. It was a novelty, to leave good collateral rather than bad karma.

The Ravagers even made a vague effort not to take pot-shots at the slaves. There was no sport in it, plain and simple. They were thin and timorous creatures, each more wide-eyed and pathetic than the next.

And once upon a time, Yondu had been one of them.

Seeing Yondu stride between the kneeling rows, men and women collared together so that if one died mid-march they'd all choke from the lagging weight, Kraglin couldn't force the disparate pieces to fit.

Slave and captain. Object and man

“Dismissed,” roared Yondu.

Kraglin flinched at the boom. Dammit. He'd gotten distracted again. 

“Anything ya loot's yours for keeps!”

The last word was drowned out by the rumble of boots on steel. The Ravagers dispersed, fanning around the ring. They double-tapped any Kree who was still moaning, no stone unturned in their quest for buried treasure.

The slave ring was quite literally that – a donut floating in space. The hole suspended an arena, covered with a forcefield that trapped oxygen, gravity, heat, and the slaves who were paraded within.

Its walls comprised of a fascinating material, something synthesized from a variety of ores, light as aluminium but titanium-strong.

How would it stand up to an impact? A miner's pick?

Kraglin, lurking in a shadow pocket by the gates, ran his gloved fingers along it, testing for a grain. It reflected the room like a funhouse mirror, warping the slaves and Udonta into elongated streaks.

In the end, he dithered too long. The gates decided that if he wasn't going to exit, they might as well shut.

Shit.

If Kraglin was caught then mooning over metals would be no excuse, even for an ex-miner. 

Kraglin ducked behind a pillar. He pressed a sleeve to his nose. Rot-stink wafted from the pens in the corner: a treacle-sweet cloud.

He was just in time. Udonta glanced around, red eyes sharp in the gloom. Once satisfied he was alone, he stooped to relieve the last girl in the line of her collar.

It unlatched with a weighty clunk. Kraglin found himself wondering why she hadn't done so herself. Maybe there was a biometric scanning device, which prevented her from activating the mechanism?

Or maybe, he thought, as Udonta repeated the same process on the next, and the next and the next, they'd just been drugged to the point that they didn't know how.

“Which of y’all speaks translator compatible languages? Raise yer hands.”

Several bristled – the vast majority. The slaves were certainly eager to comply. The others remained hunched for the most part, gazes scooting occasionally to the captain.

Udonta let them look. He was resplendent, all dirty blue skin and glinting gold fangs, and Kraglin slickened traitorously in his groin cup.

“Who can translate fer the others then?”

Enough hands remained that Udonta nodded.

“Right. Try to keep up.” Then, to the room as a whole: “Single word answers. Move only if I tell ya to. Don't call me 'master'. Name's Udonta, or 'cap'n'. Understand?”

A few voices dared to break the silence; the rest were quick to join. It was a congregation of doleful “Yes, Udonta"s, pitched at every tone from soprano to bass. Kraglin didn't know if he should find it disturbing or hilarious.

“Walk to my side of the room if ya been collared all yer life.”

Kraglin couldn't peek from cover too often. But when he did, he saw several of the slaves – scrawnier ones, stunted and empty-eyed – wobble to their bare feet and stagger across the hall. They weren't bothered by their nudity. But then again, Kraglin supposed, shame was unknown to those who'd never been taught the meaning of the word.

Udonta nodded to himself. He made an addendum to his past order: “Or if ya can't remember life beforehand.”

Another dozen or so peeled from the ranks. Some were older than Kraglin; others far, far younger. They teetered over the floor grills, used to shambling in a line. They rubbed their newly bared throats, faces registering confusion. The skin around their necks was bleached in a band – sunless and scarred.

Udonta paid no slave individual attention. Just like how he was careful to treat his crewmen – crewmen like Kraglin – as dispensable parts, like cogs in a mining machine.

Kraglin's numb white fingers formed a numb white fist.

“The rest of ya – who knows what this means?” He pointed to the flame on his chest, nail scraping the stitches. “Raise yer hands now. Good. You lot, if ya want leathers of yer own, stand up an' head to the far corner. I'll take ya to the quartermaster after I've dealt with these.” He thumbed over his shoulder, to the shivering huddle of neck-strokers, who stared at their discarded collars like they'd never seen them outside of a mirror.

“Rest of ya, y'all ain't too far gone yet to make choices. So I'll offer 'em. This...” He tapped his chest again. “Is the Ravager flame. It's the flag of a pirate, an outlaw, someone who gets spat at in bars. If ya join us and walk beneath our colors, thas yer life. You won't be a slave no more. But you'll follow my orders, an' if ya don't I'll mow you down, same as I would any other recruit.”

A pause, while he waited for the translators to catch up. The burble of voices reminded Kraglin of faraway drills.

“Y'all don't wanna join? Yer free to go. There'll be Kree escape pods left – we got most of the bastards before they jettisoned. If ya can work out how to fly 'em, they're yours. If not, we ain't in the hitchhiker business. You’ll starve if no other ships pass this way before ya run out of dead meat to gnaw on. But hey. Your choice. Now, make it.”

There followed a mass rustling. Some stood, others remained seated while they processed. Still more sprinted for the doors with assorted genitalia flapping in the breeze.

The runners, Kraglin suspected, hadn't worn the collar long.

But while activity buzzed around Udonta and the new recruits, it was the birth-slaves Kraglin's gaze wandered back to.

They didn't make a break for it. Didn't do much at all. Just stood docilely in the places they'd been allotted, close like they were chained.

A few, Kraglin noticed, had wrapped their hands around their throats to mimic the collars' squeeze.

Once Udonta had his new Ravagers lined up to his liking, he turned back to the birth-slaves. This meant he was facing away from Kraglin.

That was a shame. Kraglin could only conjecture on what his face must look like, as he delivered the verdict.

“Yer too broken to be of use to me. All of y'all need years of shrink-sessions. Thas shit I ain't got the time, patience, or money to offer. So. The first choice of yer free lives is gonna be this. Do you try and make yer own way in the galaxy? Do ya stay here and hope a Nova cruiser happens to pass before ya starve, or a Kree unit comes to recapture whoever’s left? Or do ya want me to end it, so ya die quick and painless-like, and don't never have to make another choice again?”

The slaves exchanged glances. One near the front – a chick, slim as a Nazghian but with a Xandarian's yellow skin – made a little bow.

“Whichever you desire, master.”

“Hell.” Udonta propped one hand on his hip, the other rubbing where his implant joined his scalp. “I fuckin' knew this was more trouble than it was worth. Shoulda killed the lot of ya...”

He stopped.

Why? What caused it?

The slave girl's confusion?

Her nervous quiver, as Udonta tipped her chin up to a more natural angle?

A mental block, the cause of which Kraglin didn't have access to?

But the next moment, the captain's shoulders squared. He nodded to himself, glaring direct into her eyes.

“But someone gave me a choice once. S'only fair I pass it on. So. I'll remind ya of yer options. Ya take an escape pod with the others, ya stay and wait, or ya die. Now, I'm gonna take this lot -”

He pointed to his new crew, who watched this exchange with a mixture of horror and dull fascination.

“To get 'em fitted in leathers. By the time I'm back, I’ll assume any who ain't moved want that third option. So get thinking, kiddos. First choice of yer lives – don'tchu dare waste it.”

He stalked out. Kraglin, as had become customary, followed. He planned to take a winding diversion, steering clear of Udonta and his procession of naked newly-freeds.

He lingered in the doorway though, glancing back at the birth-slaves. He seared their faces into his memory, and wondered which, if any, he would see again.

 

* * *

 

 

Kraglin ambled dazedly around the ring, processing what he’d overheard.

He didn’t join the raiding parties. Their yodels buffeted him like blasts of solar wind. There was a vast array of loot to collect; the slaves were poorly attired, but their masters tended towards the decadent.

Fat corpses dripped with filligree, sumptuous diamond tassels, sautoirs of platinum and star-forged jewels.

Kraglin had plucked gemstones from rock seams across the Quadrant. But until today, he’d only ever seen them in their uncut forms. Here there were rubies, sapphires, spinel and jade, all polished and faceted, a thousand hues contained in their depths.

But they couldn’t distract him from his contemplation. In the end, only one thing managed that.

The klaxon on his wristpiece blared. One hour before take-off.

Kraglin sprang a foot skywards.

Shit – he’d walked too far. Those who fell behind got left. That was Ravager Code, a rule almost as steadfast as the motto taught to each new recruit when they took the flame.

_Steal from everyone. Not each other._

Kraglin set off at a jog, saving his stamina for the final stretch. He burst onto the gantry as the shuttle hatch winched open. As Kraglin scrambled for the ladder, he took the opportunity to study his crew from above.

Ravagers clustered the dock in a dark red raceme. There wasn’t a single birth-slave among them. Udonta had meant what he said about them being too broken for canon fodder.

Their collars, however? Well, that was a different matter.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Kraglin hadn’t noticed Udonta pocket it. He’d cuss himself for that later, although it was an understandable oversight. Udonta’s sleight-of-hand could fool anyone, even an unseen onlooker.

Plus, Kraglin watched his captain brazenly slot toys under his coat whenever they passed a bazaar, often while staring the stall owner dead in the eye. He must’ve become desensitized.

But regardless of whether he’d seen it happen, at some point during Udonta’s address, a collar had wound up in his coat lining, stashed between knicknacks and lint.

And when he clambered up the cockpit ladder, out the collar rolled.

Udonta froze.

So did Kraglin: two islands in a tumultous red leather sea.

The collar trundled on. Leisurely, oblivious.

The crew fell silent one after the next, in the same way atoms leached energy from one another after a hull breach, heat ebbing towards numbers better registered on the kelvin scale. A man at the front of the pack stilled, then his neighbor, then his and his and his, until the horde stood transfixed. It was as if the chime of rolling metal had sucked all oxygen from the room.

 Tullk waited until the collar rolled past. When he stomped down, it fell with a sonorous clang.

“Who the fuck brought this aboard?”

The first mate wasn't one for raising his voice. He didn’t need to.

When he repeated himself, Kraglin’s chest shrivelled as if years of inhaled rockdust had quickened in a fast-acting cancer.

“I said, who the  _fuck_  brought a goddamn Kree slave collar onto this ship?”

This was bad.

Udonta’s eyes bulged in shock. Then, gradually, they narrowed.

He flicked through his ranks. Ravagers old and new had been crammed into the storage hold like protea-packets in a crate. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

The junior crewmembers stood out. Their leathers hung stiff as the dehydrated meat strips the galley broke out on long-haul flights, which tasted of lightly salted rubber and glued your jaws together when you chewed. Whenever an ex-slave shifted, they were accompanied by creaks, louder than the hangar door.

That closed behind them, corrugated slats slithering to meet the mag-clamps mounted on the floor. The airlock sealed with a feeble hiss.

No way out. They were trapped. And Udonta was looking for a scapegoat.

But it wouldn't be long before someone with a brain between their ears – maybe even Tullk himself – traced the rolling collar back to the captain’s chair.

It would be easier if Kraglin's body had acted of its own accord. This was not the case.

Kraglin was present, from his scruffy Mohawk to the pinch of his toenails against the caps of his too-tight boots. He knew exactly what he was doing. He knew it defied every principle, every law of self-preservation.

And, with a shaky swallow, he did it anyway.

Kraglin stepped forwards. His soles squeaked on the metal, a jagged slice of sound.

“Mine, sir.”

“Oh?  _You?_ ”

Tullk wasn't taller than Kraglin – he only had an inch on Yondu. But he was girthier than both, and his hair hung in mildewed dreads.

They almost outstank his breath as Tullk closed on Kraglin, booting the collar to one side.

It lurched to the corner, skittering like a portside varmint, one of the ones that nested under ships when they’d been locked in dock long enough to form their own ecosystems.

Ravagers leapt away from it. They collided with each other and the walls, the collar a gray plague rat in their midst.

Tullk’s voice was deceptively soft.

“An' why, boy, were you carrying a slave collar in your jumpsuit? You gotta  _kink_?”

Obnoxious laughter thundered around the shuttle. The Ravagers were relieved – only one of them would die today. But there was no humor in Tullk's shrewd blue eyes.

Kraglin frantically shook his head.

“N-no sir! Just lost coupla teeth recently, is all. Was thinkin' of meltin' that down an replacin' 'em.”

Tullk watched him. Everyone watched him. They waited for the tension to break, the fist to be swung, the rest of Kraglin's teeth to join the collar on the floor.

Growing up in miner tunnels cultivated a healthy mistrust of open spaces. Kraglin disliked having his back against anything but a wall. Being in the middle of a shuttle, surrounded by people, all of whom were looking at him, was very close to his personal iteration of hell.

But he could stomach this, if it kept Udonta's secret safe.

“Here.”

He hooked down his underlip. His jaw twanged as he opened his mouth: showing his fuzzy tongue, discolored gums, and the molar at the back that was rotting from the root.

“See?” he gargled.

Udont’s stare blazed hottest of all.

Kraglin didn't meet his eyes. He held his lip there, pinned halfway down his stubbly chin, drool collecting around his finger tip.

He had to suck spittle into his mouth sharpish when Tullk retreated with a nod and a grunt, retaking his seat besides the captain.

Kraglin grabbed the collar. His first clumsy swipe hit air, vision wobbling from the adrenaline rush. He caught it on the second, the metal so cold he could feel it through the trembling bloodlessness of his hands.

Once it was bundled in his poncho, he snuck back to his place. All seats had been flatpacked into the walls, bar those in the cockpit which were reserved for captain and mate. The crew forewent belts in favor of mass inertia: the density of their jampacked bodies kept them in place.

Kraglin grabbed an overhead stability ring. It slickened with his own clammy sweat.

He pillowed his cheek on a wiry bicep, concentrating on the chilly sear of the collar through his jumpsuit. He pretended he couldn’t hear Tullk whisper: "I'm keeping my eye on that one boss, don't you worry” into a pointed blue ear.

 

 

* * *

 

 

They swarmed from the ship like ants from a prodded mound.

It hadn't been a pleasant journey. It was stuffier than a mining stope, stinky with the reek of unwashed Ravager and slave.

There was one bonus to his upbringing: Kraglin was about as claustrophobic as a mole.

He'd been buffeted between the Ravagers on either side. The poncho did little to disguise the shape of the collar. The angular edge dug into his ribs every time they expanded, and the contraction that followed felt too much like a retreat.

How could he be so stupid?

Standing up to Tullk in front of everyone? He was a skulker, dammit. Leave the showmanship to Udonta.

But it was Udonta who’d stolen the collar, and Udonta who dropped it.

There hadn't been time for thinking. It had all happened so fast, and Tullk had been  _right there..._

Kraglin tongued the gap in his lower jaw, copper infesting his tastebuds. He pressed on the splintered roots of his broken teeth and explored the crevice around the rotting one.

The holes still stung. Pressing on them grounded him, moreso than the collar. Despite its weight, the iron hoop felt washy and unreal, like Kraglin might glance down to find an armful of smoke.

Why had Yondu taken it?

What did he want with it?

Perhaps Kraglin's on-the-fly story held more merit than he thought.

Yondu had been looking for tooth replacements, that was all. Wanted to swap out his mottled yellow fangs for silver.

“Do you have a  _kink_?” Tullk had asked.

Kraglin stroked the band. He located the locking mechanism; even through the poncho, he could tell it was a simple thing, formed of a tab and a slot.

It opened at a press – which returned him to the question of why the slaves hadn't freed themselves, the moment their master was dead.

_Do you have a kink?_

He shuddered. A small motion: a twitch that ran from neck to shoulders. It would have gone unnoticed, if the captain wasn't watching.

His gaze had been fixed on Kraglin since they uncoupled. Expression artfully blank, eyes calculating.

Tullk gave Yondu's shoulder a friendly squeeze. He murmured in his ear again – enquiring whether Obfonteri's remains were going to be pulped in the communal cook-pot or simply ejected from the nearest airlock, after Udonta got him alone.

Stars, Kraglin hoped he wasn't going to be ejected.

Surely Udonta wouldn't? Kraglin  _had_ kinda saved his ass.

But then again, this meant Kraglin knew, and  _that_  made him a threat...

Kraglin's neck creased under his chin. He admonished himself again for speaking up.

Udonta was boss. Sir.  _Cap'n._  

He was the biggest fish in the quadrant's congested pond, discounting Stakar Ogord himself. He would've fought his collar like a rabid mutt, kicking and biting, gnawing on any hand that tried to hook him to a chain-gang. Nothing like those obedient little creatures back at the hub, who were so ready to bow and scrape and accept an arrow through the skull, if it was only what Master wanted.

 

And here was that same man, smuggling slave collars aboard the ship he owned for no discernable purpose.

 _Maybe,_ Kraglin thought, as the passage to the shuttle hatch cleared, Ravagers spilling into the harsh glare of the solar lamps,  _he was going to put it on someone._

What better 'fuck you' to your old masters than to play-act as someone else's?

 

And now Kraglin was flushing, collar swaddled in his arms as the Ravagers drained into the hangar.

If he didn't hurry, the ship would empty. If the ship emptied then Udonta would catch him up. And if Udonta caught up…

Well, that airlock scenario became a helluva lot more likely.

Kraglin would rather face the inevitable confrontation  _after_  Udonta had a chance to cool off. Preferably, that cool-off would last long enough for Kraglin to prove he wasn’t going to use the collar for blackmail.

And, he discovered to his mild surprise, he wasn’t.

Kraglin was too smart to want a mutiny. Should the captain be deposed, what happened then?

Power plays. Instability. A helluva lot more deaths than necessary.

The deaths of nameless nobodies, nobodies like Kraglin.

He had no desire to take over, and equally, he had no desire to wind up as collateral.

But he could always press on this weak spot for other favors. Money. Promotion. Attention - that'd been lacking, since Yondu introduced him to the crew with a grin that made Kraglin's chest hair curl as happily as his dick.

The only reason Kraglin didn't consider this option was because his mind was already preoccupied. It fed him images without conscious permission – images of the collar, wrapped around his own thin throat.

More concerningly, it enjoyed them.

 _You shouldn't get off on this,_ Kraglin told himself.  _It's wrong. It ain't somethin' to be... y'know. Fetishized and shit._

 But while his conscience niggled away – rarely heard and rarely adhered to – Kraglin's cock, as with the genitalia of most young men, had a mind of its own.

 

He waddled off the ship as fast as possible, ignoring Udonta's calculating stare. He held the collar to his fluttering chest and hurried to his dorm to add it to the growing collection behind his panel in the wall.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is all so passive. Things get a lot more action based after the next chapter. I truly appreciate each and every comment - thank you all.


	3. Marigold

Surprisingly, he wasn't grabbed at mess and hustled off to the airlock. In fact, over the next three days, Udonta returned to his usual mode of dealing with Kraglin: pretending he didn't exist.

The  _Eclector_ had always felt too big. Kraglin didn't know much about Stakar Ogord, or what went down between him and Udonta – much less what their relationship was like before the banishment.

Evidently, they'd been close enough that Ogord hadn't taken the easy route and killed Udonta the moment he broke Code. But whatever crime Udonta committed, in the murky tracts of years-gone-by, it made it nigh impossible for him to hang onto a crew.

Their numbers dwindled at every port. They always operated at under-capacity, sometimes dipping down to skeleton levels.

Kraglin had never seen the beds in the barracks block full.

The emancipated Kree-slaves helped. They numbered thirty in all, another fifth in addition to the current roster of rookies and rankless red-coats.

Whatever big job was simmering on Yondu's back-burner, the slaves would give the Ravagers a much-needed boost. Their numbers were split evenly, assignations divvied up between gunners, general scrubbers, galley workers, and engineers.

Only problem was, none had any experience.

While Kraglin had been a beginner mere astral-months ago – and was still far from competent, let alone confident – he found himself fast-tracked through promotion by dint of not being totally useless.

This was good on some counts - more responsibility, more control. But on others? Well, Kraglin wasn't cut out to be a teacher.

The ex-slave had an unpronounceable click-consonant name, but she answered to Marigold, in honor of her lurid yellow skintone. When she tentatively made to push the wire into the socket that would've fried her and, more importantly, shorted half the block had this relay been live, Kraglin groaned and clipped her on the side of the head.

It was light. A scolding cuff, like he saw Udonta giving Quill. 

Her breath hitched in her throat. She  _whimpered,_ and cringed away with huge eyes, pupils shrunk to dots smaller than the tittle over a lowercase 'I'.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!”

Kraglin sighed. 

He didn't have the empathy to muddle through long-winded platitudes and comfort, and suspected she wouldn't appreciate his  attempts. But she was breathing rapid and high, and her trembling fingers grazed the scars around her throat...

“Everyone fucks up first time,” he said gruffly, plopping the panel between them so she could watch his progress upside-down. “Like this, see?”

He untangled her wire-knot, and glanced up to ensure he had her attention. He did, but she was staring at him rather than his handiwork.

It took a pointed wriggle of the panel against the floor, metal chiming tinny as a dropped collar, to angle her eyes to where he wanted them. Then and only then did he start snapping the conductor-pegs onto the requisite wires, narrating as he went.

“Issa lil' sequence, see? Just gotta get it down in yer head. Live, neutral, earth.”

He'd told her all this before, and shouldn't have to again – but the slow cadence of his voice soothed her rattled nerves. He waited for her to nod before unscrewing the back panel.

“Under here, we got the fuse. If anythin's gonna pop in a power surge or a solar storm, it's these. Now, whas the first thing I told you today?”

Her mouth worked as she tried to remember. Her hands were knobbly galls, knuckles ground into her knees. But at least she weren't rubbing her collar-scars no more.

The pair had claimed an alcove in the boiler room. It was peaceful, if you discounted the occasional pock of expanding copper piping, mistakable for pistol reports unless you were concentrating.

Around the boiler, plasma sputtered and bubbled like soup in the galley cauldrons.

The endless pound of the  _Eclector's_ heart – three superheated-coils in which atoms were smashed on repeat – reverberated less than one hundred meters away, suspended in a chute of reinforced glass that stabbed javelin-style through the galleon's core.

It was noisy, but considering his upbringing, Kraglin liked it. Quiet places gave him the jeebies. Retire to a peaceful hydroponics farm and he'd hear the Nazghian mine drills roaring in his sleep.

“T-turn off the power,” she stuttered eventually, just as Kraglin was considering caving and giving her the answer. “Make sure nothing's sparking.”

“S'right. There'll be a big crank-switch on the wall. That'll isolate yer compartment from whas in these.”

He motioned for her to join him, crawling from under the boiler to point out the tubes. Translucent pipes branched from the core, interlocking and overlapping in a geometric knot.

Their contents – an electric-green slurry – glowed in time with the ship's pulse.

“Super-conductive crap, even at room temperature. Carries charge throughout the ship. Y'know them silver-lined rods that run between the solar panels? Yeah? Musta noticed 'em, sharp chick like you.”

He wasn't good at giving compliments; the words tasted fake as they tumbled from his mouth. But then again, Marigold wasn't used to receiving them.

 

“They either carry plasma or high-pressure coolant. Either way, we  _really_  don't want 'em to break. Soon as one busts, the automatic valves are supposed to seal 'em off – but this poor ol' galleon's getting on a bit, so it's best we check 'em every week-cycle. The crank also turns 'em off, and you'll wanna make sure the lever's all the way down before ya even  _think_ about fiddlin' with electrics. Else I'll have to send one of yer buddies who's been assigned scrub shift to scrape toasty lil' bits of ya from the upholstery. We don't want that, do we?”

Kraglin wasn't the biggest talker; spewing this much at once made his throat ache. He was grateful when Marigold quit sucking on her tangerine lips and re-joined the conversation.

“No, we don't. I'll be sure to remember that.”

“Good, cause I'll be quizzin' ya again before the day's out. Now, les look at this panel next – this is what ya see inside a botchin' door relay...”

By the time his shift ended, Kraglin was confident Marigold wouldn't fry herself accidentally on a routine repair.

On purpose was another matter. While their new crewmates had a bunch of brewing psychoses, the Ravagers didn't have the men to spare for a round-the-chronometer suicide watch.

Any ex-slave wanted the easy way out? They'd be waved on their way, and asked to keep mess to a minimum.

Nevertheless, Kraglin allowed himself to nurture the self-satisfaction of a job well done. He swaggered back to crew quarters and placed his palm on the interactive screen at the bottom of the bunk stack. He waited for the crash of his unfolding pallet before rolling sleeves up his wiry forearms and starting the climb.

Each bunk winched to lay flush against the wall. The hole behind gave the men somewhere to stash possessions, and the fold-up bed gave them a semblance of security.

The only folks who could access another man's cubby were those who'd lopped off his hand, and the captain.

Kraglin had all appendages attached. That only left one culprit.

Oh, he'd been careful.

Kraglin's spare leathers lay in a crumpled bunch, just the way he'd left them. His tiny smattering of effects – one set of gambling dice, one PADD with malfunctioning keyboard displays, and a weird red bauble he'd bought after seeing Udonta gaze at it longingly from the other end of a temple-market – were still in their order.

But he'd been examining that same bauble last night, tossing it from hand to hand, the smack of curved glass against his palm registering with a dull noise and a sting in his calluses.

He had a distinct memory of twisting it so the lil' sculpture inside – a tiny bust, typical souvenir-crap from a planet who had made their deity into a tourist attraction – was faced away from him, because he didn't like being watched while he slept.

Right now, the god's beady eyeballs were trained on his pillow.

Kraglin slithered into his bunk when Half-nut, crawling up behind him, started smacking at his boots.

He reclined, glaring at the under ribbing of the bunk above, as it curved around Half-nut's slight weight.

He supposed he ought to be grateful Udonta didn't steal the damn thing. Sure, a part of Kraglin longed to give it to him – along with an offer for a drink, and perhaps a quick round in the sack afterwards.

But he hadn't  _acted_ on it, because Udonta never once showed interest.

Kraglin had been blinded by Udonta at first. But picturing the captain knelt in his bunk, scrabbling through his possessions and scowling as he turned up blank after blank...

Udonta was just a man.

A man like him, with all of the strengths, weaknesses, thoughts and fears and furtive secrecy that entailed.

And if he wanted his toy back – so Kraglin thought, as he tapped along the wall until he found the hollow panel, then whipped a knife from his sleeve and jiggled in the seam until it came undone, revealing the loupe, the pick-ax head, the working datapad with his engineering manuals, and the collar – he could flarkin' well ask nicely.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Next cycle brought no changes to Kraglin’s sleeping area. However, he arrived at his work station to find his toolbox askew, nudged a whole inch to the left.

Could be coincidence.

Horuz might've kicked it as he waddled past, or Marigold might've gone rummaging.

Or, as Kraglin discovered when he skulked across the gantry, intercepting snatched fragments of conversation as they echoed up the engine shaft, captain could've made a surprise inspection.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

He sauntered out of the shower the next morning.

His pits had reached a noxious level; they stopped him sleeping - and, more importantly when considering his continued livelihood, stopped Taserface sleeping too.

The big guy occupied the lowest bunk in their stack. He'd negotiated a switch with both Kraglin and Half-nut, and answered Half-nut’s question about whether he was scared of heights with a fist.

Kraglin found his uniform in the steam room, a wave in a choppy leather sea. It still smelt rank, and there wasn't as much condensation running down the seams as he'd expected.

Plus, he could've sworn that his pocket zipper hadn't been undone when he took it off.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Finally, at the end of the week, Kraglin flopped onto his bed to find it neatly made.

If there was one surefire way to get bedbugs on a spaceship, it was creating a nice warm space beneath the sheet. He kicked his blanket into the corner, cursing the captain in his head.

Then reconsidered, and  _smiled._

If Udonta hadn’t paid attention to the state of the bed when he arrived, he was getting desperate.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Power looked sexy on Udonta.

Marginally less impressive on Kraglin – so he thought as he puffed his reedy chest out in front of the mirror.

Matted bodyhair peeped from the collar of his jumpsuit, and a polite critic might call his nose 'aquiline' rather than 'beaky'.

He twisted from side to side, trying to convince himself that this was salvageable, that his bony face and sallow skin were ever going to look as intimidating as Udonta. He tried on a snaggletoothed grin, lips peeling up the gum.

It looked terrifying alright, but in a plastic sort of way: a smile molded on a hairdresser’s dummy. Kraglin opted for a sneer instead, crossing his arms and standing legs-spread in a mimic of a pose he'd seen on an advertisement billboard in the slave ring. Not too bad. Maybe, with some work...

The door from the shower room cranked open. Kraglin backpeddled from the mirror like he’d opened a shutter on a solar flare.

The room was divided in two. A partition kept the humidity of the showers from saturating the lockers.

The mulch and grime that sloughed from the Ravagers' bodies formed a fertile humus, nourishing any and all spores that clung to them after they tramped back from their missions. Thus, as the dormitory blocks worked on different rotas running different jobs, each shower room developed a unique rainforest ecosystem.

The foliage bolstered the output from the oxygenerators – plus, greenery was supposed to have therapeutic properties in a workplace environment, or some shit.  _Added to the ambience_.

Kraglin wasn't feeling particularly ambient then. He fell over, smacking his tailbone hard.

“Ow!”

“The hell are you doing down there?”

Mamet. Oh, Kraglin hated him like he hated the white-hot throb in his ass.

“You gotta fuckin' knock,” he seethed, staggering upright and refusing to show his wince.

“Knock when I'm comin'  _outta_ the showers...?”

Mamet trailed off. He, like most of their race, was an angular thing. If it weren’t for their height, they’d be identical – although Kraglin liked to think that Mamet had a far less fun and outgoing disposition.

“Kraglin, buddy. Look. We worked together back in the tunnels.”

Unfortunately. Best thing about becoming a Hewer was leaving Mamet's nauseating optimism to be crushed between runaway coal-carts.

But that hadn't happened. Kraglin's ploy to rid himself of the nervous, shy, disgustingly  _likeable_ shit had backfired and landed them in this new life together. And, for some reason, Mamet thought this made Kraglin his official agony aunt.

He blinked his big blue eyes. 

“Can I tell you something?”

Their shift started in five minutes. Kraglin's ass ached – a feeling he wasn't accustomed to, and didn't much enjoy.

And, most importantly, he and Mamet were not and never would be  _friends._

“No,” he snapped, and stormed off to terrorize his trainee.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 _Marigold_.

Kraglin made a vague effort to remember it, but equally didn't beat himself up when he failed.

She'd been a supplies pilot for the Shi'ar Hospital Syndicate before she was captured mid-circuit by a Kree battalion, and put to work ferrying battle slaves to and from the plains of war.

She was Rickitorian, which meant fuck-all because Kraglin was far from the most widely travelled. That's what you got for being confined 400 cycles per Standard on the same mining rig. Born-in-space he might have been, but he weren't no Roamer: one of them kids who grew up flitting port to port, hitching lifts where they could and stowing away where they couldn't; brats who'd seen so much of the galaxy that they felt part of it rather than adrift.

Kraglin, in contrast, could identify three species at a glance.

These were, in order of commonality: Xandarian, Shi'ar, and Kree. He wasn't too sure about that last one. Udonta had blue skin too, and the last time someone made  _that_ mistake they went caterwauling out the airlock.

Kraglin didn't want to follow them. He kept his curiosity to himself.

“So, Miss Ricky-ticky-torian.” He squashed himself into the gap between the boiler unit and the vent duct, joining her, three spiders and an entire hoover’s worth of dust. “You wanna quit cryin' and get to work, I do I log this as yer off-shift?”

He wasn't  _trying_ to be mean. But comforting didn't come naturally, and hell, hearing that would snap him out of any funk.

Marigold buried her face in her knees and shook harder than ever.

It took her effort not to cry - far more than if she just let it all out.

She held her breath until her face went an interesting lime green, the sound of her gasps broken only by the occasional noisy hiccup, and smeared snot all along her sleeves.

Kraglin sighed, catching a wrist in each hand. He treated them to a squeeze, ignoring the mucus.

He wasn't volunteering to hug her. He could try, but most of his attempts to be nice to girls wound up with them calling him  _creepy._

“You gonna tell me whas wrong,” he said. “C'mon, darlin'. Y'know you can talk to me.”

When that got no response besides a sniff and a warble of half-sobbed breaths, Kraglin started to conjecture, waiting for her nod.

“You injured?”

Nope.

“Someone die?”

Also nope. The possibility lurched into his mind and lodged there, like a splinter under the surface. Kraglin sucked a harsh breath of his own.

“Fuck, Mari. Somebody touch ya?”

He wasn't the biggest or meanest on the crew.  Neither was he smart, wily, or just plain lucky enough to compensate. But Kraglin could plot. He played the slow game, and he understood that if you wanted to hurt someone, you had to time it carefully.

“Was it that a-hole Tazie? Fuck, just 'cause he lost his girl, he thinks he can go around pawin' at everyone?”

Marigold shook her head. “N-n-n-uh Taserface,” she whispered, hitching between hiccups. “No one t-t-touched me.”

“Oh.”

Kraglin rocked back, sore tailbone throbbing. He felt, perhaps, a little sheepish. 

“Well, whas the matter, girl? Can't sit here sobbin' for no reason, can we?”

“I don't know! I don't know!” Marigold balled fists in her sockets, knuckling hard enough to pop out the eye of a lesser species. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm s-s-sorry -”

“Hey, no need for all that!”

Wasn't every day your trainee tried to blind herself rather than continuing your lessons. Was this somehow his fault, something he'd done? He did excel at fuck-ups, but this was impressive even by his standards.

She flinched when he shuffled closer, one hand on the boiler’s underbelly. “Sweetheart, look. If ya don't tell me whas wrong, how'm I meant to help?”

Rather than melting against him and sobbing her gratitude, Marigold scrunched until her face looked like it had been gathered by a rubber band.

“How'm I supposed to tell you,” she parroted, “if I don't know why the fuck I'm crying?”

Kraglin dropped her wrists sharpish. “Hormones?”

That got her glaring. It was wobbly, but lightyears preferable to the quivering chin that preceded it.

“ _No._ ”

“Uh. Okay then. Guess ya don't need a reason. We. Uh. All gotta cry sometimes. I guess. Not really a fan of it myself, but hey. You do you.”

He tried for an shoulder pat. She allowed it, although she stayed in her ball.

Kraglin's heart sunk to his bowel. If this was the chick's way of coping with stress, she wouldn't last as a Ravager. It'd be kinder to rip off her flame at the next port.

But they needed the manpower. Udonta opened recruitment drives every time they stopped to refuel – none of which were all that popular. Whatever Udonta did when he broke Ogord's code, it had been serious.

Kraglin firmed his mouth. Even weepy cannon fodder was better than none.

“Listen,” he said quietly. “We got'chu outta that damn collar. Ain't asking for much in the way of payback – 'cept a pair of willin' arms to do our work. But yer free now. If this ain't the life for ya, don't force it. You gotta make that decision for yourself.”

For some reason, that opened the floodgates again.

Kraglin surrendered when her whimpers started bouncing back from the pipes, forming a hollow cavern of mourning, like they were crouched under a bell.

“Take this shift off,” he said, cutting through the racket.

“Go back to yer barracks, wash that look off yer face. Get some food, tuck down somewhere quiet, and don' let me see ya until you can talk five minutes without...”

Marigold hiccuped. Kraglin pulled a face.

“ _That._  Now I gotta job to do. Catch ya later, Mari.”

He hooked his hands through the cluster of pipes that overhung the doorway of their cubby, swinging out foot-first. His lanky legs emerged like those of a birthing baby bilgesnipe.

He nodded to the engineers and muttered “don't bother her,” to Horuz – then scarpered before he could be chewed out for issuing orders to a senior.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Relieving himself of teaching duties meant that he finished all assigned repair jobs double-time. Rather than reporting back to the engine room, Kraglin idled on the last couple: tightening nuts in slow, lax-elbowed cranks, humming along to a song he couldn't quite place.

It was peaceful – until he glimpsed ginger hair, several feet below his eyeline.

He’d set up shop in a deserted corridor, deep in the  _Eclector's_ undercarriage. Far from the central generator, the gravity was a lil sloppy as a result, and the contents of Kraglin's toolbox occasionally floated up to eye level before clattering back down to rest.

Crash.

Kraglin jumped. So did the boy, who'd backed into this compartment without bothering to take stock of his surrounds.

  _Stupid._

“You ain't s'pposed to be out alone,” he snapped around the screwdriver in his mouth, soon as the palpitations ceased.

He was already scoping the tunnel, ready for one of the lad's minders to accuse him of kidnapping.

“The hell you doin' this far from the Bridge? Ain't safe ‘mong crew; y’know they wanna eat ya.”

“You're here,” Quill pointed out. Kraglin couldn't fault that.

“Yeah well,” he grumbled, screwdriver distorting the words. “Not fer much longer. Scat, kid. Find someone else to bother. If you wanna slip yer leash, thas yer business, but don'tchu go getting' me in shit -”

“I just want somewhere to sit and listen to music for a bit! I won't cause trouble.”

“You breathin' my air'll cause me trouble if anyone catches ya, kid.”

Kraglin squinted at him suspiciously. He didn't dare shift his hands within the coil he was deconstructing, not when he wasn't looking at what he was doing. So he stood frozen, boots braced against the rubber grip pad on his stepladder, dropped nails floating around him before jangling to the floor.

“What'chu even doin' without a babysitter? Thought Udonta was strict on that.”

“ _Udonta.”_ Quill's face was sour as if he'd sucked on his daily anti-rad-sickness pill rather than swallowing. “He's been weird lately. Weirder than usual. Keeps snappin' at everyone, and none of us know why.”

“Huh.”

Kraglin tried to pretend he didn't care. It lasted approximately five seconds. Then he caved.

“Alright kid. Tell me everything.”

 

He couldn't quite believe that he had yet to be confronted over the collar incident – but if Udonta was taking it out on his Bridge crew instead, that indicated he was pent up, and saving the worst for Kraglin.

He listened to Quill's tale of unprovoked raging – scary – and whistling – worse.

The kid seemed content to perch on the bottom rung of his stepladder and blather while Kraglin returned to his work above him. The cadence of his voice was oddly soothing, like chatter from the Breaker Boys on the rig.

Kraglin had never liked children. It was hard to, born and raised in a culture that saw them as expendable tools, useful due to their small size and fast reflexes and ability to bounce when dropped from height.

But equally, you didn't realize how much you'd missed something until the nostalgia hit.

Quill's twitter brought a smile to Kraglin's face. It bypassed the usual process of asking his brain for permission.

The first warning sign was the stomp of boots.

The second was the “Quill!”

The third? That was the red and blue wrecking ball that barrelled into view just as Kraglin was preparing to reconnect the electrics and call it a day.

He jerked his fingers back fast enough to avoid losing higher brain function.

Shame. If he made himself a vegetable, he’d be beyond whatever tortures the captain might inflict.

Udonta stomped to the ladder, hauling Quill up by the bicep. The boy cringed, but more as if he expected a lecture than a slap. Sure enough, Udonta provided:

“The hell you doin', boy! Runnin' away from Tullk – we thought you'd been eaten!”

Then he noticed that Quill wasn't alone. His eyes slimmed to slices of frosty pink quartz.

“You,” he said.

Kraglin swallowed, throat bobbing like he'd swallowed his own screwdriver bit.

 “Me?”

“ _You._ ”

Udonta hurled Quill behind him. His eyeteeth were on display: two sharp juts of gold and silver that pointed to his furious brows.

“You got an answer for me yet? Don't think yer innocent act from last cycle’s gonna fool me, boy -”

“Last cycle? What?”

“Y'know what I'm talkin' about! The only reason you ain't yet dead is because I can't fuckin' find it!”

“Find what – oh.”

Kraglin wasn't the smartest cookie around, but even he knew better than to share his eureka moment and blurt “The collar!” in front of the kid. Quill turned from one adult to the other.

“Are ya gonna whistle him?” he whispered. Kraglin couldn't tell if he sounded elated or horrified.

From the way he flicked his ear, neither could Udonta.

“Fuck, brat. Am I raisin' a psychopath? No, I ain't gonna whistle him. Not unless he really pisses me off – which he is, pretendin' like our  _lil' meeting_ never happened!”

“L-lil meeting?”

Kraglin risked a glance up, disentangling his hands from the cabling. At least if Udonta kicked the stepladder out from under him he wouldn't have to redo all his work.

“Cap'n, I'm sorry, I ain't got the first clue what'cher talkin' bout -”

“Meeting!” Udonta yelled. “Last cycle! Where I fuckin' cornered ya before ya scampered into the showers and told ya to  _give me my fuckin'..._   _You-know-what_ back!”

Kraglin had zero recollection of this. Udonta appeared convinced though, so convinced that Kraglin couldn't rule out spontaneous amnesia.

Then, buried in his hindbrain, a puzzle-piece slotted into place.

_Mamet._

Kraglin managed not to giggle. Just.

“Are ya sure you got the right Nazghian?” he asked.

Udonta managed to look like the biggest thing in the room, despite that Kraglin was elevated two feet above him on a stepladder.

“Course I did! I'm cap'n. I don't make mistakes.”

But while he sounded sure about this, Kraglin spotted the way his eyes roved his face, latching onto identifying characteristics. Like his nose – large by his species' standards – or his eye color, a touch rheumier than the norm. Or perhaps...

“Did he have this?” Kraglin asked. He pointed his wrench at the scar on his temple. The scar had come from the N-stope collapse back when he was newly-promoted from the Hurrier packs.

That chunk of rock almost brained him. If he'd dropped, the ore would've been collected before his body.

Udonta's teeth champed on nothing. “Hey now! All you hairy whiteys look the same to me!”

Kraglin's eyebrows rose like they were being winched up by the mining drum. “Wow.”

Udonta scoffed. “Yeah, yeah. Go cry to human resources.”

“We're pirates. We don't  _got_ human resources.”

“Exactly!”

Quill continued his spectatorship. “What's going on? Cap'n?”

“Nothin'.” Udonta's glare could've curdled moonshine; Kraglin's blood was no challenge. “Ain't that right, uh...”

“Obfonteri,” Kraglin supplied. "Uh, what was it ya wanted from me again?”

Udonta's teeth were a metal kaleidoscope, golds and silvers and even a few capped bronze. When he bared them, Kraglin could count the chips. It was the least friendly smile he'd ever been on the receiving end of.

“Quill. Why don'tchu run along. Go find Tullk or Oblo, and tell 'em to play with ya on cap'n's orders.”

Kraglin was about to protest – for all he knew, the brat's presence was the only thing keeping him alive. Quill came to his rescue.

“Don't kill him. I like him.”

“The hell?”

“The  _hell?_ ” Kraglin echoed. “Why?”

“You let me listen to music, and you didn't tell on me.”

“I mighta been about to...”

Kraglin shook his head. You never looked a gift vessel in the thrusters. If Quill was gullible enough to pledge allegiance to the first a-hole who kept him company for more than ten minutes, Kraglin would take full advantage.

“Okay, kid. You stay.”

“Hey!” Udonta barged forwards. “I give the orders here!”

Leaning on the stepladder from the opposite side, chest bumping the handhold, he sneered up at Kraglin and shoved him firmly in the knee.

It was calculated. Deliberate. No way it could be passed off as an accident.

 Kraglin staggered. Only he was standing on a step, and there was nowhere to go but down.

His heel clipped air.

The bottom dropped from his guts.

He pitched, kicking at the stepladder, praying for another convenient gravity flux to cushion the fall...

 “ _Don't!”_

Quill's shrill shriek rang in Kraglin's ears long after he should've hit the floor.

He opened his eyes.

A broad blue hand wrapped around his forearm.

 

“And,”  said Yondu, addressing Peter while Kraglin sweated and trembled in his grip,  “I decide whether or not he lives, brat. Not you. Don't forget it.”

Quill's eyes were huge.

“Yessir,” he whispered.

Udonta tugged, reeling Kraglin's long string of a body upright again. His face burnt hot. His ears roared, black spots dancing in front of dazed eyes. When Udonta nodded Quill towards the exit, he couldn't find the air to protest.

As soon as the boy turned the corner, Kraglin slumped.

He stepped off the stepladder, shaky as a newborn leggy creature of some description – it wasn't as if Nazghian children went on zoo trips. He tottered to the nearest wall and slid down it, meeting the floor with a clatter of scrawny bones.

“The collar,” he said hoarsely. “Ya want it.”

“The collar,” Udonta agreed. “I want it. Hand it over, son.”

“No.”

Udonta's brows were bald as the rest of his skull, excepting the patchy scruff on his lower jaw. They raised until wrinkles bunched against his implant.

“ _No?_ ”

Kraglin licked his flaky lips. All the moisture in his body had descended to his bladder, and it took every ounce of concentration to keep it there.

“By which, uh, I mean that it's in my dorm-block, sir. There'll be folks prowlin' round, as it's near lunch-break. And... well.”

He gestured to Yondu, a vague flutter of the fingers that encompassed the blue skin and yellow snarl and the muscular curve of his body.

And his arrow. Couldn't forget that.

“Yer kinda recognizable, boss. Draw attention, an' all.”

Udonta preened – subtly, but Kraglin saw it.

“What d'ya recommend?”

His teeth clicked around the last consonant – must be more plosive in his language, although Kraglin only heard sibilance. He rubbed shaky gloved fingers through his Mohawk, carding out grease.

“I could come to yer cabin? Tonight?”

 Thirty seconds of silence later, he extrapolated the cause behind Udonta's glare.

“Oh! Uh, not for that. I ain't in this for blackmail, sir.”

Udonta folded his arms. “Then why did ya...?”

_Why did ya save my ass? Why lie? Why risk Tullk's wrath – and mine, for that matter?_

Kraglin didn't answer. He wasn't sure he knew.

Udonta must sense his discomfort, because he let the question trail.

“Tonight then,” he growled.

He turned briskly, heels grinding on the grills and leather overcoat snapping the tops of his boots. He didn't look back - which was lucky, because Kraglin was goggling after him, too shocked to pretend otherwise.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The collar resided in his jumpsuit for the march to Udonta's quarters. Kraglin kept one arm over his belly, tight as an M-ship safety harness.

He wished he'd put on an undershirt. The collar ached, the metal so cold it cramped his abdominal muscles. Still, at least it gave him an excuse for shivering.

Just the chill. Not fear - nope, not at all.

Sure, there was no reason why Yondu shouldn't dispose of him, once he got what he wanted, but hey. Kraglin would deal with that problem when he faced it. 

Seemed like that would be sooner rather than later. Soon as he knocked the door whooshed open. Udonta didn't keep him waiting.

"Well?" he snapped. "Where is it?"

Kraglin gulped at the quiet _snick_ of the  lock. He had to unzip to fetch the collar. Not far - only mid-chest, and Udonta was too busy glaring to ogle, but it still raised warmth to his cheeks.

Udonta snatched it out of his hands. He scanned it, turning it over and over, holding it close to his face.

“Obfonteri? The hell's this?”

Kraglin should start begging while he still had a tongue. But for some reason, begging wasn't what came out.

“I dunno, sir. Yer the one what brought it aboard – why don't you tell me?”

“Not the collar! Idjit.  _This._ ”

Udonta shook the metal hoop an inch from Kraglin's nose. It took Kraglin several moments to work out what the hell he was on about.

The overhead lights didn't help. Yondu kept them on their brightest setting, either to make it harder for wannabe-mutineers to hide booby traps or due to a species adaption that left his night vision as feeble as Kraglin's was sharp.

The light glanced off a million toys, glued and stapled to every horizontal surface, plus a few of the vertical variety.

Glass wedges, snow globes, figurines and stress balls floundered under a blanket of grey-brown dust. Spring-necked bobble heads joined cheap pre-plasma toys - the ones that jerked for a full minute after they'd been wound up, motions stilted as if they were fitting.

One spasmed in the corner. Kraglin heard the whirr of a miniature cog system and the clash of cymbals, regular as if Udonta had been playing with the thing before Kraglin thumped on the door and said “Obfonteri reporting for duty”.

Udonta's left eyelid twitched in time to the buzz. Kraglin decided against mentioning it.

He turned back to the collar.

There!

Just below the locking mechanism. A scratch. It was half the length of his smallest fingernail. 

“The hell...”

“You see?” Udonta seethed. “Ya damaged it! The hell were ya doin', boy – playin' catch?”

“It's just a lil'...” Kraglin trailed off.

Udonta didn't seem like the most stable kinda guy. Right now, that glower promised death.

Kraglin reassessed.

“Hell sir, I'm so sorry. No idea how that happened. How can I fix it?” 

“I dunno, Obfonteri. Pretty glarin' fault.”

Kraglin's heart sunk. Udonta wanted an excuse to be mad at him – to heave him into the black and be done with it. Easy way out.

“C'mon, sir. I'm a miner. I fixed my pick a million times – I can make this good as new. Just take a bit of filin', and patience, and -”

“Or,” Udonta interrupted. “If ya really wanna prove yer loyal...”

His body language was too aggressive: a predatory lean, teeth on display, shoulders a solid wall. From hooded eyes to out-turned boots, he was a captain through and through.

“You could put it on me.”

“H-huh?” Kraglin would've stumbled, if he wasn't standing in a military at-ease with his legs locked out. He nearly did so anyway. “What?”

“You deaf as well as stupid? Repeat back what I just said.”

Orders. Orders were simple.

Kraglin clung to them.

“You said to p-put it... put the collar... put it on you?”

Udonta nodded. “S'right. What d'you think?”

It could be Kraglin's imagination, but that posture looked a touch defensive too. Udonta's crossed arms formed a barrier, to keep Kraglin from...

What? Steadying his pistol at his captain's chest? Calling him  _weak?_  

He combed through his mohawk, catching every tangle.

“But whaddo I, whaddo I do...”

“Do?”

When he didn't face laughter, Udonta stopped glaring like he was trying to make Kraglin catchis alight. While Kraglin stuttered and clawed at the air, as if he wanted to tear a shred in this reality and skip to the next universe over, a nice and banal world where he'd never chosen Ravager life, the captain hopped onto the bed, casual-as-you-like.

“You put that on me. And then, Obfonteri, you do whatever the fuck ya want.”

Kraglin’s cock made its opinion known.

Dammit, this felt so grimy. So  _wrong._

How could he get off on this? Did he  _enjoy_ the thought of owning others? Like a big business corporation who saw its workers as expendable meat, fresh for the grinding?

Like a Kree slaver?

 _No,_ he wanted to spit.  _I ain’t no monster._

But the collar gathered sweat from his clammy palm, and Yondu smirked like a well -fed feline, rolling onto his side.

Everything felt wrong about this.

Kraglin had that swooping sensation you got in the pit of your gut when you walked into a tunnel marked  _hazardous: cave-in imminent._ As if every second, every breath, every heartbeat might be his last.

“Why?” he croaked.

“ _Because,_ Obfonteri. That's why.”

“B-but I don't understand!” 

That was his problem. Kraglin couldn’t compare him to Marigold or the other freed slaves – much less the poor bastards they left on the station, to sit where Yondu ordered them until they starved.

Yondu was nothing like them. He had far too much  _energy._  It bubbled now, frothy as a geyser, revealing itself in the flare of his nostrils, the impatient tap of his boot.

“Well?” he snapped. Kraglin stared, wide-eyed – then scrunched them up, in an effort to minimize the light intake before it blinded him.

“I – I don't...”

“Yes or no, boy!”

“Will one of them see me dead?”

Yondu's scowl took on a quizzical slant. “Huh?”

Kraglin licked his lips, tongue questing out each chap.

“Just wanna know whether I can walk away, is all, an' not face repercussions.”

Yondu studied him a long moment. Then he motioned to the door.

“Why don'tchu find out?”

Each step Kraglin took he expected a hole to burn through his neck. The dolls watched, eyes blank beads. He swore they swivelled to follow him. How the hell did Yondu sleep here? 

He paused on the threshold, marveling that his heart still beat.

“Yer really gonna let me walk?” he asked.

Yondu remained slanted to the side, face in profile. He kept it ducked so the lights streamed through a prism of gore-red crystal.

“Go already,” he grunted. “Before I change my mind.”

Kraglin could.

Kraglin  _should._

Kraglin was doing his utmost to survive, and somehow, he suspected boffing his captain – or however else that offer was supposed to be interpreted – wasn't conducive to that goal.

His foot hovered above the divider between Yondu's room and the corridor. The airlock was deceptively thin: a door surrounded by rubber sealant. It sucked hermetic-tight when clamped, making it both impossible to eavesdrop through, and safe in case of breach.

All Kraglin had to do was set his boot down. Then Yondu could shut the door and they could both pretend none of this happened. 

“Why?” he asked, shuffling a half-pace back into the room. He stayed tense, ready to bolt. “Why d'you wanna...”

“You really wanna know?”

Kraglin gulped. Nodded.

“Them that don't got power want it, and them that have it, want more.” None of this was unfamiliar. “But men is men, Obfontieri. We’re…Whassa word – we make mistakes, and shit...”

Kraglin never completed higher educationing. He weren't no thesaurus. He shrugged.

Luckily, Yondu didn't require actual input; he used him as a sounding board as he snapped his fingers, the pop echoing off the clutter on his duvet.

“Uh, imperfect, flawed, gullible... falli... Fallible! Thassit. We can't just keep gettin' stronger. Sometimes, ya just wanna let it go.”

“Thas what it's about? Lettin' go?”

Yondu nodded. Okay. Kraglin could accept that, just about. But -

“Why me? Why not Tullk? Or Trexi, or one of the others?”

“Tullk and Trexi and the others don't get it.”

 _I don't get it either,_ Kraglin wanted to say. But then again, he didn't get any of this. He was out of his depth by an entire oceanic trench's worth.

“I'm gonna,” he started, pointing to the door. He didn't finish the sentence, but actions spoke louder than words.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

He asked Marigold, after dawdling around the question for three cycles.

Would she be offended? What would he do then?

Laugh, probably. Ravagers didn’t pride themselves on political correctness.

But what if she got upset? What if – stars forbid – she cried?

 “Do you ever miss it?” 

Marigold banged an uncooperative nut with her wrench. It wasn’t attached to anything, but it kept her occupied while Kraglin twisted a patch out of spare wires to bypass the snapped circuit they were mending. She paused, pushing sweaty hair from her forehead.

“Miss what?”

Kraglin shrugged. He didn't ask twice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to every commenter. Especial thanks to Havicat, Sad-Mad-Rad, Ladyazure971, and jdrewz on the last chapter. You guys give me the energy to continue.


	4. Lick My Boots

The thing about ex-slaves? They were all different.

Mighty inconsiderate of them, in Kraglin's opinion.

There were those that acted as if their lives had never been disrupted by collars and chains. Others assimilated less easily; they went glaze-eyed when receiving orders and needed to be reminded that they shouldn't wait for permission to eat, sleep, or piss.

And then there was the captain.

He acted more erratically than ever after their talk. If Kraglin noticed, given how attuned he was to every shift of the man's temperament in case it resulted in him being hurled from an airlock, it was only a matter of time before others did.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Knowhere was never the most hospitable of places, but right now it surpassed 'unwelcoming' and ventured into 'downright hostile'.

Udonta finished his evisceration. He wiped his arrow on his coat before tucking it into the holster.

The contrast of red blood and blue skin and golden metal made muscles contract in Kraglin's lower abdomen. His dick swirled around the insides of its cup like it'd been locked in a tumble dryer.

As distracting as that was, it changed precisely nothing about what his captain just did.

“Hell,” he whispered, eyeing the gory residue that dripped from the ceiling, while Quill puked in the corner and Tullk stalked forwards to give Udonta a bollocking – in very, very hushed tones. “I thought ya said y'all needed them Corporation spooks alive?”

Udonta flashed a grin. It would be charming were it not for the bloodstains from where he gnawed one man's throat out.

“Changed my mind.”

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Ingrown toenail. The sort of pain you never thought about until it was there, bludgeoning your mind with every step. Then, once the agony passed, you swiftly forgot about it again. But for the duration of the week before he gave in and trimmed the damn things (or just shot the offending foot off; both were tempting) lances of agony shot through his ankle complex whenever he placed his boot down, toes crunching forwards in the cap.

Kraglin limped from the mess hall to the engine block. He made it halfway before Mamet sprinted past, heels kicking puffs of rust from the ancient grilling.

The grill lattices were arranged in hexagons, spanning the corridor in a honeycomb made of a million tiny mesh links. They creaked if you walked, rang if you ran, and all-out boomed if you sprinted. If you stopped in the center of one, rather than by the braced edge, it bowed alarmingly close to the power coils beneath.

Limping, Kraglin discovered, made an alternating squeak.

The thunder of Mamet's passing drowned the noise, as did his over-the-shoulder bellow: “Obfonteri! Cap'n's gonna space Trexi!”

Kraglin wanted to ignore him. Dammit, he didn't  _like_ Mamet, and he didn't want to lead the guy on only to have to rival-zone him at a later date.

They weren't friends. All that bound them together was their species, a few choice snippets from their past, and the loupe stashed behind the secret panel in Kraglin's bed-cubby.

And that Udonta couldn't tell them apart. But Kraglin didn't like to think about that.

All information was useful information though. Kraglin supposed he should learn a bit more about vacuum exposure before Udonta tired of his existence and sent him out the same way.

He waited a calculated five seconds, until Mamet rounded the corner and left earshot. Then he followed him, trailing the echo of his footsteps through the  _Eclector's_ knotty maze, jogging with both hands on his tool belt and cursing his stabbing foot with every step.

He could've located the commotion even without Mamet.

There was yelling. A lot of yelling, loud and scratchy and hoarse.

Udonta's, Tullk's, Trexi's, and higher pitched squeaks from Quill.

Those chimed above the guttural exchanges of cusses and growls. They carried far, and were the first thing Kraglin heard on his approach – an incessant chorus of  _cap'n, don't!_

Next down the tonal scale was Trexi.

“The hell's wrong with ya, boss? You been loco lately – if I ain't seen yer dick in the showers I'd ask if it were yer time o'the month!”

Kraglin tried not to be jealous. He had no right to be - not when he'd turned the guy down.

When he rounded the corner, he found Mamet panting from the run and a wall of silent Ravagers between them and the altercation.

He had to stand on his toes to see, as much as it pained him: teetering from boot to boot and using the bowed Mamet as a crutch.

He found Udonta's gunner, the slim and stinky Trexi, pinned halfway up a wall with her cap'n snarling in her face. The arrow, a menacing needlepoint, vibrated an inch from her temple.

“The hell did she do?” Kraglin whispered.

Trexi gave off a general aura of savviness that rivalled space salts twice her age. He'd seen her swigging pints with the boss, elbows linked, counting down as they chugged.

Watching them at each other's throats? Kraglin expected the pair of them to disengage, spin around, and shout 'psyche!' at any moment.

Quill yelled his reply above the muffling barrier of greasy red leather: “She didn't do nothing! Cap'n's gone crazy!”

Kraglin frowned. No way would Udonta execute one of his most loyal crewmates without reason.

That just went to show how wrong he could be.

“All I did,” Trexi snarled, grappling with Udonta's wrists as he kept her pinned midair, her boot treads braced on his thighs, “was ask how  _smart_ it were to go towards Stakar's space when we's still lackin' crew numbers.”

Udonta pushed out his lower jaw, chin almost brushing hers.

“Ya questioned orders,” he growled right back. “Thas mutiny.”

Trexi wriggled harder.

“No it fuckin' ain't! It's  _disputin' a fuckin' plan thas likely to get us all killed_! Dammit, cap. Yer strong, but you ain't fuckin' omniscient _._ Ya make mistakes – s'why you gotta Bridge crew in the first place!”

Kraglin didn't know what om-niss-ee-ant meant, but he kinda got the gist.

Udonta snarled. But beneath that rage, there was...

Well, Kraglin couldn't put his finger on it. Cap'n wore masks. It was what he did. He put up his walls, he bared his teeth, and he acted the big bad guy until he became it.

But even though Kraglin would never lay claims to  _knowing_ the guy – they'd barely talked, outside of last night's incident – he'd been observing him for some time.

The way he drew silly faces on the dummies in the training rigs, and left tiny glass baubles everywhere in a less smelly way of marking his territory. The way he let his shoulders slump when he thought no one was looking.

Right now, those shoulders winched tauter than Kraglin had ever seen them. Udonta put his acting skills into overdrive.

_He knows he's wrong._

Once the thought entered Kraglin's brain, he couldn't get rid of it. He scanned Udonta, up and down, from the glimmer of his implant to the square set of his feet. And he found...

Hesitance.

Not enough to let him drop Trexi, but enough to stop the arrow from burrowing through her eye socket and out the other side.

Things started to make a lot more sense.

Trexi needed to back down. Not because Udonta wouldn't, but because he  _couldn't_.

However, Trexi possessed a stubborn streak an inch longer than Udonta's lightyear. Her pride wouldn't stand for surrender.

And therefore, Kraglin surmised miserably, she was gonna die here. Unless Kraglin did something about it.

Now, that was a thought to rival his stupidest. Just because he said no to Udonta once and survived, didn't mean it would ever happen again. Why did he give a shit about Trexi anyway? They weren't friends.

His toe hurt.

The pain infected his entire foot, spreading up his leg when he shifted his weight. 

He ought to limp away. However, Kraglin liked this job a helluva lot more than his last one.

He'd like it a helluva lot less without a leader.

Should Udonta murder Trexi in cold blood, in front of a generous-sized portion of his crew – too many for their stories to be dismissed as gossip – he would be cementing his own downfall. Kraglin was sure of it.

“Sir?” he called, voice warbling as he tried to make himself heard above the shift of fifty hobnailed feet. “Sir, before ya kill her – and I ain't sayin' ya can't, because it's totally yer call, an' all – can you an' me talk about that thing?”

Mamet shrunk away, like every other intelligent Ravager – which really ought to illustrate the awfulness of this plan.

Udonta dropped Trexi. He turned in a leathery whirlpool, coat resettling around him. Knelt on the floor, Trexi coughed and kneaded at her windpipe. She smacked Quill when he tried to help her, but Tullk's grip on her shoulder prevented her from flinging herself at her captain and clawing out his eyes.

Kraglin couldn't concentrate on her though. Not with Udonta staring at him.

“What did ya say?”

Udonta stalked along the corridor, whistling his arrow back into its sheathe. His pace was unhurried. It rolled fluid, between _dancer_ and _wolf_. His arrow was a needlepoint, hidden and revealed by the swing of Udonta's duster.

In that moment, Kraglin convinced himself that the captain could smell fear.

Right now, he reeked. He backed up, glancing for the exit, gauging distance and velocity and... He wouldn't make it. Even if he could outrun the captain no way would he escape that arrow.

Kraglin saw only one way out of this, and it involved talking. May the stars have mercy on him.

“I,” he stammered, at the cold compress of a buttress against his back.

His attempt to slide along it in the direction of the door was foiled; the captain shifted to match him, slinking sideways while Ravagers scuttled to reform their red-coated wall.

“I was just thinkin'. Yes. To yer, uh. Offer. I'm sayin' yes.”

There was silence, bar squeaking boots and one blown nose.

“Yes?” Udonta repeated, brow cocked up.

Kraglin firmed his wobbling chin. He nodded.

Udonta, for some reason, didn't look pleased.

“My cabin, Nazghi-boy,” he said, storming back the way he'd come and shooting Trexi a dismissive sneer.

Quill he treated to a hair ruffle – but the boy ducked before the hand could connect. Kraglin knew he wasn't the only one to see Udonta's hesitate, fingers curling on air before tucking into a determined fist.

“ _Now._ ”

Nothing to do but obey. Kraglin shrugged at Mamet. He scuttled after his captain, shooting a harried smile at Quill before the kid started fretting.

Quill would've run after them, if it hadn't been for Oblo's grab at his collar. He was hauled back shrieking and swinging, shouting the whole way.

“You better not kill him!” he hollered, as they rounded the curve that siphoned Bridge outflow up towards the captain's quarters. “You hear me, Cap'n A-hole? Yondu? You hear me?”

Udonta strode on.

Fuel pulsed through the pipes that ran the corridor's length, bio-luminescent blood from the five-chambered heart of the fusion core. The pulses intermittently lit and silhouetted him: red, black, red, black, blue.

He didn't answer – not even to 'Cap'n A-hole', which Kraglin was hysterically refusing to think about in case it set off a giggle fit. 

“Pick up the pace, boy," was all he said.

Kraglin gulped. He did as he was told.

 

* * *

 

 

The door slithered shut. The cabin formed a sealed bubble, silent as dead space, except for the thunder of Kraglin's heart.

Kraglin found himself in a mirror of Trexi's position: pinned to the wall with the arrow revolving besides his earhole, toenail smarting in its boot.

“If there's one thing is this galaxy I don't need,” growled Udonta, “it's yer stars-damned pity,  _boy._ ”

Kraglin kept very, very still.

Had he misheard? No – and he didn't have his plugs in either. Only thing blocking his hearing was wax and the threat of impending eardrum perforation.

“Y-ya think I...  _pity_ you?”

Udonta's scowl spoke for itself. Kraglin giggled, a high and humorless squeak.

“I'm fuckin'  _terrified_ of ya, sir. Pity? I – I don't -”

Kraglin gestured up and down Udonta's body: all five-some stocky feet of it.

“Ya don't need it,” he said lamely.

Fists bunched in his collar, tight enough to make the leather creak. Then, gradually, they relaxed.

When Udonta flashed a grin, the reflected glare off his metal teeth stung Kraglin's eyes. He opened them again to discover that Udonta had stepped back, observing him from a distance.

“Wanna drink?”

Kraglin's gasp left him in a pent up whuff. “ _Do I_.”

Only drink relaxed inhibitions, and relaxed inhibitions loosened tongues, and all in all this was one hell of a hellacious idea.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

“So,” said Kraglin, plonking his bottle on the floor besides him.

Yondu only had one chair, of which he assumed command. He swivelled around and around, head tipped back, kicking lightly from boot to boot.

Kraglin was no etiquette expert, but he suspected perching on the bed would be presumptuous. He was only a lowly engineer, after all.

Floor it was.

“Why this? What's the big deal? And, uh. Sir, you gotta stop turnin' circles like that if ya only got spirits in ya. Thas how ya vomit.”

Udonta snorted. “Y'don't tell me... What makes me puke. 'F I can do barrel rolls in an M-ship on a liquor lunch, I can handle this.”

He spun faster in demonstration, blurring red into blue.

Kraglin counted five revolutions before Yondu slammed both feet on the ground, boot treads acting as brakes while he clutched his stomach.

“ _Fuck_.”

Kraglin hid his smirk behind the lip of the bottle.

It seemed weird to call the captain by his surname after being propositioned by him, especially when they were lounging in his cabin with a crate of moonshine to keep them company. Kraglin wasn't yet drunk enough to call him 'Yondu' to his face, but sobriety deteriorated rapidly, left unchecked. Every swig weathered it, every gush of singeing Kylorian whisky into his belly.

Eventually, when Yondu recovered enough to restart his lazy loops – going in the other direction, Kraglin noticed, like he was rewinding a bobbin – his mind worked its sluggish way through the rest of Kraglin's speech.

“Why what?”

“Huh?”

“Ya just asked me 'why this'. I'm askin' ya 'why what'?”

“Oh.” Kraglin sloshed his bottle at him. “Why  _this._ ”

"Whas 'this'?"

 

“Why the collar,” he said. "Why's it mean so much to ya?”

Yondu didn't reply. Not for a while, until after Kraglin forced another two mouthfuls down, to blaze like swallowed coals against his stomach lining.

“Wanna see something cool?”

Not what Kraglin expected, but... “Sure, whatever.”

“Awright.”

Yondu turned to face him fully, chair groaning. With thighs bumping each arm and back slouched so his chest lay in line with his shins, he made for a surly picture. 

The hands which unfastened his scarf to reveal the ring beneath, weren't nearly so collected.

Nazghian eyes adapted for tunnel lighting. Yondu – noting his increasingly pained forehead rubs, squints, and exaggerated sighing – had dimmed the solars to a gentle twilight. That was nice. It didn't make Kraglin's retinas feel like they were being basted in their own juice.

It also meant he could see Yondu trembling, the corded muscles in his forearm shaking like rocks before a cave in.

Tension. Tortion.

_Danger._

“Yer wearin' it,” he breathed. Then, because Yondu was trying to communicate something in his emotionally stunted, angry way: “ _Why?_ ”

Yondu made to rewrap the scarf, then changed his mind and left it hanging. He pinned a glare on Kraglin, defying him to laugh.

“I give orders all day. I make decisions. I dish out discipline. An – an don'tchu get me wrong, yeah? I like it. But 'til I was twenty, I didn't know what a  _choice_ was. An' now I make 'em  _constantly,_ an' it's just, I need, I need...”

“Something,” Kraglin offered, when it became apparent Yondu's increasingly agitated gurning wouldn't help him locate that missing word.

Yondu nodded. It was manic, manic like he'd been all week. A flurry of a man, unpredictable and volatile, snapping at anyone who breathed out of line.

Kraglin wasn't to blame. Yondu was a big boy; if he reacted badly to  rejection that was his own damn problem.

But he couldn't help but feel responsible.

Yondu trusted him. He'd kept his secret so far, and he always would. Mines didn't raise snitches.

But Kraglin turned him down. And now...

Well, Yondu had sampled a taste of what he couldn't have, and he was so fucking starved he was ready to maul the first person who spoke out against him.

Trexi this time. But what if the next poor sod to fall foul of Yondu's temper was Tullk, or Quill or Kraglin himself?

This wasn't just about lust anymore.

Yondu stroked the collar, nails drawing earsplitting lines.

While the hostile set to his face remained, his eyes didn't match it. There was desperation there. Kraglin liked nothing less than watching a proud man beg.

“I need  _somethin',_ alright.”

So they were back to negotiations. Kraglin held his bottle loosely, elbows propped on crooked knees. His right ear smarted from its roasting-by-arrow, but the burn of his toenail outshone that pain.

“What d'you want from me?”

“I want ya to give me orders. Like this. When the cabin door's closed, where no one else can see.”

Kraglin wet his lips. His stubble too; his tongue pronged out further than anticipated.

“Is this. Uh. A sex thing?”

Yondu looked taken aback. “No! Hell, kid.” Kraglin did his best not to seem disappointed. “Ya... ya can make me do little things, y'know?”

 _No,_ Kraglin thought.  _No, I don't know._

But he nodded along, attentive as ever, absorbing the information as Yondu fed it.

“Fetch an' carry, help ya, stuff that's of use... Or just stuff ya wanna see me do. Hell, I dunno what sorta fantasies you been harborin' about yer cap'n.”

There was that familiar smirk. Kraglin knew every gold cap. He could recite the pattern of metal and enamel that alternated from tooth to tooth: incisor, canine, premolar...

“Ya could make me lick yer boots.”

“I- I wouldn't make ya do that, s-sir.”

Yondu thinned his eyes at him. “Liar,” he said.

Blood lit Kraglin's face red as a mine evac-light. It only got worse when Yondu stood, scarf dangling around his neck, revealing the collar and a glimpse of rarely-seen throat.

The skin was a greasy: oil and grime, accumulated since the captain's last shower. Yet somehow, the sight of that vulnerable, slim blue strip was more erotic than if Yondu had whipped out a performance pole and pasties.

“Here,” he said, gesturing towards the seat he'd just vacated. “Park yer ass.”

Kraglin set his bottle between his feet. “Uh, then what?”

“Then?” Yondu's smirk had a deadly edge to it, sharp enough to puncture windscreens in hard vacuum. “Then, ya gimme some goddamn orders before I kill every man on this ship.”

Talk about motivation. Hey - when life gave you yaro root, you made yaro stew.

Kraglin sat. He tried to do it in a cool and collected sort of way, but it wound up more of a collapse.

His muscles stretched too tight, as if he was recovering from a taze to the back. While he wasn't the one in the collar, he was sure having difficulty breathing.

Yondu knelt before him, placid and still. There was an unspoken challenge in his eyes.

Orders, he'd said.

Kraglin swept his tongue around his mouth, collecting moisture. He had to repeat this process three times before he had enough to speak. The insides of his cheeks rasped paper-dry, throat parched and sore.

“Go on then,” he croaked. “Lick my boots.”

The tightness in his chest snuck down to his crotch when Yondu ducked to obey.

He regretted the command pretty quickly. They'd been on Knowhere last cycle, for stars' sake.

Kraglin didn't know the sorts of muck he'd been tramping through, but it smelled rank and must taste ranker. Like licking a split garbage bag at the ass-end of summer.

Yondu's nose scrunched back into his face. The first slide of his tongue over the stained leather left him gagging, but there was no hesitation.

He just lifted Kraglin's foot off the floor – so easily, one broad blue hand under the heel while the other cupped his slim ankle – and nosed along the seam, letting his tongue drag after.

He retched again, spit flooding his mouth. It smeared across Kraglin's boot, shining the cap over his smarting toe.

The rest of it wasn't nearly so shiny. Yondu's back shuddered around his next raw heave.

Aw hell. Kraglin didn't want to add chunder to the mess.

“Shit,” he gabbled, twisting his foot free.

Yondu released him easily. His hands hovered mid-air, as if confused why they no longer cradled Kraglin's long, thin feet.

Kraglin grimaced at the patterns of his treads, ingrained in filth across Yondu's palms.

“I'm sorry – that were stupid to ask. You okay? Ya wanna keep goin'?”

Yondu gazed up at him, empty and serene. An odd peace melted the strong set of his shoulders, leaving him loose-limbed and daze-eyed.

Then he absorbed the expression on Kraglin's face. That peace dissolved.

He scoffed. Flicking his coat off his holster, he reached for the collar fastener.

Kraglin shrunk on his seat.

“Shit! I pushed too far, didn't I? I'm sorry, please don't kill me, d'you need anything, can I get you anything...”

Did Yondu need a hug? He didn't get the chance to offer.

As he slipped from the seat, knees hitting the ground in a mirror of his captain's position, Yondu sighed through his nose, long and hard.

“I ain't feelin' this, Obfonteri.”

“Huh?” Now it was Kraglin's turn to look bewildered. “What – I thought I hurt ya!”

“Nah, ya... Ya...”

“What?”

“Didn't push  _enough._ ”

“ _What?_ ”

Yondu clamped his mouth shut. His chin wrinkled from the force with which he clenched his jaw, underbite giving him the appearance of a particularly petulant bulldog.

“Nothin'. Fuck off, wouldya?”

Hell.

“I can do better! I swear, I'll do better!”

Yondu huffed. “Yer just sayin' that cause ya think I'll go loco.”

He tugged at the collar, making his breath quicken and his pupils dilate. Kraglin's cock squirmed in its cup, leaking hot thick slime.

He wanted this. He wanted this so gosh darn badly.

It hit him like a tidal wave: desire so fierce and earnest that it left him quivering.

He wanted to be the one to tighten that collar, to decide when Yondu got to breathe.

The thought that anyone might take his place made a new fire burn in him, colder than arousal – the same fire that urged him to slip the loupe from the ring on Mamet's belt.

How  _dare_ anyone take what was his.

“You ask anyone else?”

He voice resounded lower than usual, even to his own ears. Huskier.

It wasn't intentional, but it had effect; Kraglin tuned into Yondu's every muscle, hyperaware of his stiffening posture. Not due to nerves. More like... A soldier on parade.

That sounded better than  _a slave before his master_. Man, this was fucked up.

“No one. Not fer years."

The steel floor plates hurt Kraglin's knees. He wanted to hop back on the chair, give his shins some relief. But it seemed better, somehow, to say this from Yondu's level - even if that damned ingrown toenail bit into the cap of his boot.

“Why me then? An'... an' don't just say it's cause I didn't rat on ya, sir.”

“It is.”

“Huh?”

“Ya think I don't know this is weird?” Another tug, another shortened breath, another flare of the pupils and a slow, luxurious fade. “Ya think I don't know it ain't healthy, that I shouldn't wannit, that I shouldn't...”

Kraglin gnawed his lip.

“I ain't gonna tell ya what to do,” he said softly. “Yer my cap'n.”

Yondu waved an impatient hand. “Damn right I am – but I  _won't_ be. Not while we're like this. Not if we  _do_  this.”

What did this have to do with Yondu's reasoning? Why had he selected Kraglin from a crew of  men, the majority of whom were bigger and meaner than he was?

Kraglin might like power, but he never craved it. Too much responsibility. 

Not like some on this crew.

“I  _mean,_ ” said Yondu, glaring as if Kraglin was to blame for his lacking comprehension, “that ya had the chance to blackmail me with this and ya didn't. That puts ya above most. I don't think you'd kill me if ya had the chance.”

“I – that's it? Those are your criteria? That I won't blackmail you and I won't kill you? We – sir, we barely  _know_ each other!”

Yondu pointed to their empty bottles: one propped on the chair arm, the other against the frame of his bed.

“Whaddya think this is? I don't uncork the Kylorian shit for anyone.”

Great. He was being  _romanced._

What if he fucked up? Would Yondu give him the courtesy of escorting him to the brig, or would he whistle him through there and then, no explanation or remorse?

“Fuck,” he muttered, sinking to rest on his heels. His toe hurt worse than ever. “ _Fuck_ _._ ”

“But,” Yondu continued, “like I said. You ain't got what it takes, kid.”

“Gimme a week.”

“Huh?”

“A week. Think ya can hold out that long, sir?”

“A week?”

“For research.”

Kraglin's turn to touch the collar. He didn't close the gap between them; just extended one arm to stroke the ice-cold ring.

No pulling, no tightening. Kraglin didn't re-enact Yondu's lil' auto-erotic asphyxiation game (although he saved that fantasy for later.) Just brushed the steel with the backs of his blunt miner nails.

Yondu's breath hitched, nostrils flaring. He leaned like he wanted to nuzzle his stubbled cheek on Kraglin's hand, but stopped himself just in time.

Kraglin didn't mention it.

“I wanna do this right,” he said instead.

He tapped the collar over Yondu's racing pulse before unfolding and limping out the door.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

It took three days for Kraglin to cave and head to the commissary, pledging a slice of his wages in exchange for an ointment to treat his ingrown nail.

Fear of what awaited him at the week's ass-end wasn't so easy to heal. Kraglin had committed - or as good as - and he meant what he said about research. But no amount of good intentions disguised the fact he had no idea where to start.

Plus, he wasn't an officer ( _yet,_ murmured a little voice in his mind. Kraglin did his best to ignore it.

Like he needed a target painted on his back for progressing through the ranks too fast. Next thing you knew, someone'd be stealing his loupe – or the Ravager equivalent, which involved doors rigged up to trip wires and grenades.

No off-shifts for him; he had to work for his daily rations.

He kept himself busy most days, most of the time. His few remaining hours he dedicated to engineering study, rather than learning the ins and outs of his captain's brand of crazy. Which was why, on the fourth day, when Trexi plonked her tray besides his at mess, Kraglin was too engrossed in his textbook to notice.

For all of five seconds that was, until she lost patience waiting to be acknowledged, and barged him hard enough to slop his soup.

Kraglin flinched. “The hell – oh, shit. Uh. Ma'am.”

“No need for all that. We're off-duty.”

“Ma'a- Trexi? Uh. Did ya need, uh, somethin'? Okay, um, I hadn't actually finished with that, but -”

“Snooze an' lose,” Trexi grunted, shovelling soup into her gob. “Can't a woman thank a guy for savin' her goddamn hide, or what?”

Oh. That's what this was about.

Kraglin rubbed the back of his neck – a gesture repeated so often that the skin had toughened, shiny and hairless as a shell.

“Uh... I was just doin' what anyone else woulda done.”

Trexi snorted. “Yeah,” she said, around Kraglin's stolen spoon. “Thas why I was stood there gettin' screamed at for five minutes before you came along. So tell me, Kraggly-”

“Kraglin.”

“How come you've mastered what senior Ravagers like myself -” A wink, a nudge of an elbow that was more like a controlled rib-gouge. “Just not  _that_ senior, y'know? But what even we ain't capable of – ya tamed the fuckin' cap'n! How in seven hells did ya do that?”

The rawness of Yondu's dismissal shrouded Kraglin's mind. It hung over him like the fog that preceded heavy snowfall.

“Dunno,” he muttered. He flicked through his engineering diagrams on loop: M-ship, galleon, shuttle; back again; each exploded map littered with labels he had to squint to read.

“Hm. Thassa shame. We could use someone with a touch o'magic to talk him down when he gets like that.”

Kraglin raised his head. “He's been...  _like that_  before?”

That was safer than putting names to it. 

_Manic._

_Desperate._

_Crazy._

Trexi shrugged. She polished off the last of his soup, gruel splattering her pointy chin. Once that had been licked, she lifted the bowl and gave its insides the same treatment.

“Yeah,” she said, belching. “Usually, he heads off on a bender and slaughters anyone who looks at him wrong. Havin' him walk on deck next mornin' not ready to murder sure makes for a nice change. Whatever ya did, it worked.”

Like that didn't pile on the pressure.

“Fuck,” Kraglin moaned. He cushioned his forehead on his hand.

The calluses from his pick had softened, but more swam to the surface to replace them. The second coat provided more even coverage, born of a variety of tasks: from straining at levers to picking at delicate circuitry with a multitool and ascending the occasional ladder.

“I dunno if I can do this, ma'a – Trexi.”

“Do what?”

Kraglin shut his mouth. Shit. _Just keep diggin', why don't you Obfonteri._

Trexi's gaze was worryingly shrewd.

“It involves the cap'n, don't it. You, the cap'n, and whatever the hell you did to mellow him out after he went loco.”

Kraglin hoped she was far, far dumber than she looked.

“I'm just not sure I have the, uh...” His fingers shaped words in a sign-language he didn't speak. “I don't got the  _instinct_  for it, is all.”

“Hm.” Trexi leaned back on the bench, knee braced against the table. Something about her pokerface told him that in the privacy of her mind, she was cackling. “Well, Kraggly. Do you enjoy it? Whatever  _it_ might be?”

Kraglin swallowed. “Yeah,” he muttered. “Yeah, I guess. Never thought I would, but here I am.”

Trexi grinned, clapping him on the shoulder. Her fingerless gloves stank: smoke and plasma from her guns. She spent every spare hour polishing them, holed up in crannies with an oilcloth, painting fastidious circles over and over the steel. Her thumb and forefingers, skinny as the rest of her, waggled like chipolatas from the gloves' tatty ends.

“Then you have the instinct,” she said. “Lemme let you in on a secret, Kraggly.”

He didn't bother requesting that she use his actual name. No sense fighting the oncoming solar storm, as they said. All you could do was batten down your hatches and let it pass. 

Trexi slid along the bench and engulfed Kraglin in her cloud of  _eau-de-Ravager._ “A good dom ain't an animal,” she murmured. “They don't keep all this knowledge stored in some scrap of their hinterbrain. A good dom  _learns._ They might make mistakes, but they grow from them. Same as anyone else.”

Kraglin frowned. “Uh -”

“Don't say nothin'. You gotta be more careful, yanno? Specially with the Bridge crew. There's some who've guessed, like me, and there's others who know damn well what goes on in our cap'n's fucked up lil' blue head but don't  _want_ to – men like Tullk. They're the ones you gotta avoid.”

“No – but – you don't – I don't understand!”

“Sure ya don't, honey.”

Trexi tapped the side of her greasy nose, black-heads dimpling the skin. One crusty set of eyelashes dropped in a wink.

“There's a good lad. Can't quite see the appeal for myself, but if ya work for cap'n, so be it.”

“Of course I work for him – he's the one who  _recruited_ me...”

“Loyalty. That'll serve ya well. Last one thought he could stick a knife in him while he was unguarded. Idjit didn't get him in the zone first.”

She sniggered: a high breathy noise that made Kraglin's heart pummel as if he was being punched in the chest by a hydraulic jackhammer. 

“Last I saw of him was his spleen. All red an' wet an'  _splat..._  Cap'n grabbed him by the boot straps and lowered him into an extractor fan, y'see.  _Bzz._ Gone. Helluva lot of mess.”

Kraglin's eyes gaped.

“Holy shit."

The hell had he got himself into?

Trexi clapped his shoulder. She levered herself up with an exaggerated groan. She didn't bother taking Kraglin's freshly-emptied bowl to the wash chute – just upended it on his skull, with alacrity.

It stank of spit and gum decay. She held it there so he couldn't wriggle, grinding down on the mohawk, and ducked to hiss in his ear:

“Don't worry yerself, mine-rat. Ya ain't like him. You actually  _like_ the boss, far 'nough as I can tell, and that'll get ya further than yer predecessors. So you be a good boy and do yer research. But whatever ya do, don't hurt him."

Her eyes were thin, mocking crescents, but the mirth ran sour the longer Kraglin looked.

"Boss can look after himself. An' once he's done, whatever's left of ya will be answerin' to me an' Tullk.”

With a last noogie to the bowl base, she lurched for the exit.

Kraglin stayed stooped over his placemat with both fists clenched. The glow from his PADD rebounded off the underside of his chin and the panicked bob in his throat. 

The noise from the canteen flooded back.

Clanks of spoons on bowls, slurps of soup, raucous laughter and cheerful back-thumps. His neighbors thought they'd witnessed some routine hazing – nothing remarkable, but equally nothing that earned Kraglin sympathy. 

Kraglin prised off the bowl, wincing as it stuck to the shaved patches on either side of his head. He dumped it on the tabletop, where it clattered to a standstill.

“Whassa 'dom'?” he asked, far too late.

Trexi had gone. There was only Kraglin, the bowl, and the PADD – which had unlimited access to the Xandarian infoweb, if he remembered rightly.

Research it was.

 

* * *

 

 

He browsed every domain he could find. He absorbed it all.

Clashing opinions, hacked accounts, vitriol spat on all sides. Apparently, the hoity-toity Xandarian populace considered this style of relationship taboo at best, outright abusive at worst.

Kraglin had his own reservations in that regard, but he got a dark satisfaction from it too: being part of an underground subculture, more forbidden and feared than the Ravagers themselves.

The quest for information overtook his studies, his work. More than once, Marigold tugged him out of the way of wrenches hurled at his head.

Horuz huffed and fumed, swearing he'd confiscate the PADD if he caught  _that damn Obfonteri brat_ snooping at it on the clock. 

It was worth it though, Next time he knocked on Yondu's door, he boasted squeaky-clean boots, slicked back hair, a tray of food from the mess, and a manual which stuck out the back pocket of his jumpsuit and clonked on his toolbelt when he walked.

His heart boinged about at the end of a bungee cord. He cleared his throat, then again when that didn't make any difference.

The world blurred in a lightheaded wash, and he couldn't be sure that the fishbowling corridor walls didn't belong to the fabric of a dream. Surreal. That was how it felt. Uncanny, as if this universe rotated a beat out with reality.

The door felt solid enough. Kraglin reassured himself of that.

“Cap'n?” he called, rapping the frame. “You, uh. In there?”

This would be awkward otherwise. How long should Kraglin hang around? His shift ground to a halt an hour back. Unless Yondu was clocking overtime – or tossing back pints with Tullk, or enjoying quality family-time with Quill – here he'd be.

Electronics covered the wall panel, inset like the interlocking chips in a mosaic. A grill curved around the biolock, formed of dense black mesh.

Assuming it was a microphone, Kraglin squatted to get on level.

“Week's up, cap'n. Are ya ready?”

A buzz. The door slid sideways, gliding soundlessly into the wall. After Kraglin stepped through it emerged again, sealing behind him with a hiss.

Kraglin found Yondu on the other side. He faced away from him, arms folded.

“On yer knees,” he breathed.

Yondu's glare simmered over his shoulder guard.

“This only starts when I put the collar on.”

“O-oh. Of course. S'rry, sir, my mistake....”

“Shuddit.”

Kraglin did so. His confidence – what little he cultivated – quivered low in his loins. His hands trembled, making cutlery rattle and bounce.

But before he could work up to the point where he had no choice but to excuse himself, Yondu sighed and uncrossed his arms. He let his left dangle, collar clasped between loose blue fingers.

“I want'chu to put it on me,” he said.

Kraglin's grand plan had already unravelled. But he was nothing if not adaptable.

“Yessir.” He swept a space among the clutter on Yondu's desk to set his tray down.

Yondu nodded to the bowl. “S'that for me?”

“You'll see, sir.”

Yondu frowned. Kraglin instinctively shrunk his shoulders as if he was making himself a smaller target.

So was this how it was gonna be? Yondu bigging it up whenever they were outside of a scene, making Kraglin work for his submission?

Kraglin wasn't sure he had the guts to stare him down – or the intuition to know when Yondu genuinely wanted him to back off, or when he wanted him to push.

This game couldn't be more dangerous. 

Kraglin cleared his throat. When Yondu thrust the collar in his face, he gently nudged his arm to one side.

“Before that, I think you and me need to talk ground rules.”

“Ground rules?” Yondu's irritation twisted into incredulousness, then abruptly back again. “I thought ya were up for this.”

“An' I  _am,_ sir. I just gotta know that I ain't gonna, y'know...”

He measured his breath, forcing himself to pause.

“I ain't gonna spank ya,” he said slowly, “or use ya as a footrest or whatever, then wake up to find myself with a week-long brig stint. Am I, sir?”

Confronted by Yondu's deepening scowl-lines, Kraglin barrelled on before he could interrupt.

“Some assurance, thas all! If yer m-mine when the collar's on -” He couldn't help the hitch around that word, cock probing the suction seal. “So long as we're where crew can't see us, ya don't gimme all this... y'know. High command to engineer bullshit.”

There. He was done. He stood back and waited for Yondu's verdict.

The collar hung between them. Slowly, Yondu lowered it. Rather than hollering for Kraglin to get out, or sending him on his way with an arrow embedded in his negligible buttocks, he nodded.

“Fair's fair. In return, I want yer word that'chu ain't gonna parade me about in front of the crew when I'm under.”

Had Kraglin missed something? 

“Uh. Y'know you can just say if I'm doin' something ya don't like. There's like... they're called safewords, an' -”

“No.”

“-I was thinkin' we could go for somethin' simple, like 'red light' for 'stop' and 'amber light' for 'slow down', but it's up to you, sir – wait. No?”

“No.”

Yondu seemed to be operating under the impression that this was the end of the conversation. Kraglin begged to differ.

“No?” he repeated, manual dragging on his back pocket. “No safewords?”

Yondu shrugged. “Ain't no point.”

“What d'you mean?”

“I  _mean,_ ” said Yondu, as if this was all Kraglin's fault for not developing psychic powers on demand, “that once I'm under, I'm fuckin' under. Ain't gonna know what  _no_  means _._  So thas why I gotta believe you ain't gonna take no advantages, an' all that shit.”

There was a lot Kraglin could say.

  _I'm not that kinda guy_  topped the list, but Yondu had no proof of that.

Below it lurked  _I've somehow started to like ya, for all the death threats and crazy and general wackiness_ , but in their line of business, sentiment actually ranked as worse than megalomania. Yondu would prefer to hear that Kraglin was angling for a Bridge position, rather than that he languished awake for hours after curfew, rolling his ruby bauble between his palms as he imagined presenting it to his captain and receiving a genuine smile.

Kraglin settled on an intermediary.

“Mutually assured destruction?” he offered. “I pull any crap in front of the crew, you kill me.”

He stuck out his hand. 

Yondu didn't shake it. But he gave him the collar, which amounted to much the same thing.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to HaviCat and Sad-Mad-Rad for commenting on the last chapter.


	5. The Drop

 

He didn't ask what went into the mess hall slops. Not because he was afraid it would kill his appetite; Kraglin ate ration packs and rats indiscriminately, like any other self-respecting miner. When the N-stope collapsed, he survived on the scabrous little shits. Better to risk rabies than wither away in the dark.

The soup certainly couldn’t be any  _less_ palatable. Whatever it was, it gave off a rich meaty aroma that made his stomach grumble embarrassingly loud as he sunk on the plush leather chair.

He latched Yondu's collar. The man looked different with it on. Not smaller; he filled out his leather shirt wonderfully, like it had been poured onto his body. But more  _docile,_ perhaps. A domesticated dog, not a wolf.

He had a weird face, Kraglin thought. Now he had license to study it, he did so at leisure. He considered gripping Yondu's chin and turning it from left to right to map each angle, the keen slice of his cheekbones and the line of his jaw.

A twinge strummed in his abdomen when he imagined doing the same with his boot.

Yondu had been carved from a chunk of rock. Not marble; nothing so smooth and swooping. Flint, perhaps? Craggy and sharp-edged and liable to cut.

“What'chu want?” He tried to inject his voice with the usual authority, but the collar sapped the strength from his tone. Kraglin found he had the power to draw out the silence. For every half minute he waited, more ink poured over Yondu's face. His fingers curled into the leather on his thighs and his lips parted slightly, moistened by his breath.

“You look good,” Kraglin said. Then, when Yondu's forehead crinkled: “Don't think. Just relax. I know what I’m doin'.”

He did. Sorta. At the very least, he'd come in here with a plan: simple, easily executed, and guaranteed to leave Yondu feeling used without causing him pain. Or without causing  _too_ much pain. Kraglin had been a Hurrier-boy; he knew crawling for extended periods was hell on the shins.

But anyway – Kraglin had a plan. He just didn’t expect to  _enjoy_ it so much.

He snapped his fingers. “Hands and knees. Here.”

The glint of Mamet's loupe behind his pried-off wall panel, the throb as his cock breached a Nazghian cervix – no thrill resounded greater than when Yondu obeyed.

Kraglin arranged him how he wanted him, amending Yondu's position with taps. He kept the touches above the belt, remembering what the captain said about this  _not being sexual_. He knocked on Yondu's shoulder when he tried to kneel facing him, then rewarded him with a rub when he shifted to kneel side-on.

His ribs bumped Kraglin's shins when he breathed. The expansion and contraction flowed in a smooth wave, quivering ever-so slightly on the exhale.

Should Kraglin reiterate those safe words –  _red, amber, green?_  

No. Yondu’d made his opinions on the matter clear.

The last thing Kraglin needed right now was to appear sentimental.  _Weak._

The bowl clonked on the rim of the tray when he lifted it. The broth slopped, and Kraglin ran his finger around the rim to catch it before sucking it into his mouth. Bitter, in a flavorsome way: brewed from meat just on the edible side of rancid.

Kraglin smacked his lips. Not the pleasantest meal – but then again, lightyears of empty space stretched between port stops. Fresh vegetable matter was limited to what they could harvest from the moss in the shower. The last time they robbed a produce ship had been months back, while Kraglin gnawed his nails ragged over his second shooting exam.

Nevertheless, he wagered the soup would taste sweeter if eaten off Yondu's back. Not the bare skin – although a dark voice murmured for him to upend the bowl and let scalding soup trace every muscle, winding between the bulges while Yondu whimpered from the burn. He could have him sit on his lap while he licked it off again – but no.

They had to keep this slow. Following the boot-kissing fiasco, Kraglin decided to plot his games prior and stick to them like his life depended on it – which it pretty much did.

This exercise in trust went both ways, he realized, as he lowered the tray to rest with one end against Yondu's shoulder blades and the other bumping the curve of his lower spine. Yondu had to trust that Kraglin wouldn't tarnish his rep, and Kraglin had to trust that Yondu knew his own limits.

What he wanted – what he  _needed_  – was someone to take control, if only in finite snippets and behind closed doors.

“Keep it steady,” he murmured. His cock squirmed in an effort to get more of itself in contact with his codpiece when Yondu nodded and locked out his arms.

His hand rested on Yondu's neck, one finger hooked against the collar. He didn't make to yank it or shake. Just rested there while he dipped his spoon between the gristle-lumps that bobbed like icebergs in an oily sea.

He ate at a comfortable pace. Mealtimes were pragmatic in the mines; you chewed only for as long as you had to, and swallowed fast as you could without giving yourself gas or risking choking. Having an entire hour allotted to lunch was a luxury that still felt foreign.

Kraglin trembled with the effort it took not to grab up his bowl and scarf it down, slurping the gravy and licking the pewter clean.

He forced himself to count. Two seconds to lower his spoon to the bowl. Five to raise it to his lips again without spilling.

He watched the liquid. It reported the minute quivers far better than Yondu's body, rippling against the bowl's hollow cup like the surface of a collapsing star.

Despite the congealed surface and dubious lumps, it didn’t provoke his stomach into all-out rebellion. A bead of drool glistened at the corner of Yondu's mouth. 

 _Issat for me?_ he asked, when Kraglin first entered.

Had he forgotten to eat? He was a chunky guy; he didn't  _look_ like he skipped meals. But Kraglin had seen how intense he got. It took several hollers of his name and a slap on the shoulder to catch his attention when he was elbow-deep in the bounty feeds, sourcing jobs that would see their bread buttered and their mystery-soup warmed.

He supposed it wasn't a stretch of the imagination, to imagine him cussing as he pushed his work for the day aside and realized the rumbling didn’t come from misfiring thrusters, but his stomach.

No problem. Kraglin would nip to the mess hall after.

He sucked his spoon until he tasted metal rather than salt, as he surveyed the picture before him.

Yondu wasn’t relaxed, but only because if he let the tension leave his muscles, he'd collapse. But his head hung low, collar bright against the jacket neckline and the grubby skin of his nape.

His breaths came steady, not jumping at the clack of Kraglin's spoon against the tray.

Kraglin waited, soaking it in. The giddiness started at the chest and diffused its way down: a mixture of  _you created this_ and  _oh, look at that, Captain’s happy._  

He abided by the age-old rules of  _you jerk my dick, I jerk yours._  Yet here he was, no hand on his cock, at the center of Yondu's attention just as much as Yondu was of his.

And he was really, really enjoying it.

Why?

Yeah, Yondu was hot. Yeah, Kraglin got a thrill from seeing his cap'n so suggestible, so willing. But that wasn't what motivated Kraglin to lift the tray off Yondu's back and replace it with his boots.

It was the quiet, accepting noise Yondu made. The hum of pure satisfaction. The low lid of his eyes.

The way his fingers splayed and curled against the floor, keeping his balance so Kraglin could use him however he pleased.

“Okay,” he whispered. He crossed his legs, relishing how Yondu bowed to accommodate. “Yer doin' good, Yondu. So good.”

He expected a nod. Maybe a smile, doped and dozy, crawling across the chink of blue visible under Yondu's arm. Not the full-body shudder, which almost bucked his boots from their perch.

Kraglin froze. A good shudder? Or – Celestials forbid it – bad?

He sat, craning forwards as best he could. One leg weighed heavy on Yondu's back, while he planted the other on the floor. From what little he saw of his face, Yondu had shut his eyes. He rolled his lip between jagged incisors, chin clenched to trembles. Kraglin couldn't tell whether he was trying not to cry – a thought too surreal to fathom – or...

No. Could it be?

Surely not. Yondu had said so; he’d made it  _very clear._

Not about sex.

And yet…

Kraglin’s gaze wandered down. It trekked lower and lower, slow, ominous, almost against his will.

Once it reached its destination, it clung there as if it had been magnetized.

The bulge swelling out his Captain’s inseam. The upwards hitch of his ass. The soft, almost imperceptible whine when Kraglin’s heel dug in.

Shit. That complicated things.

Kraglin chased meat fibers out from between his teeth. He intended to call the scene to a halt after eating – he didn't want to overtax Yondu's endurance, and kneeling on a floor without cushioning was quite the trial, regardless of whether that floor was steel or spacerock. But Yondu's thighs quivered like jelly, and his leathers squeaked as he pressed his knees together.

Crap, he was trying to hide it. He didn't want Kraglin to -

 _Okay._ Kraglin slouched in his seat. His heel ground at the point where Yondu’s lowest ribs fused to his spine.  _Okay, okay. You just gotta stay cool. Don't let on that ya saw. Just… act natural._

Easier thought than done. 

Yondu whimpered – a strangled burst, hastily swallowed. His back arched high as a cat’s, and he curled around his erection like a pill bug.

“Turn to face me,” Kraglin blurted, before Yondu worked himself up to whistling. He set both feet on the floor, letting the man shuffle free. Both of them breathed out once Yondu knelt again, torso situated between Kraglin's eyes and his dick.

Cogs spun in Kraglin’s brain. He needed to say something, anything to break the tension.

“Now, uh, lick my boots again. Want ya to make 'em shine.”

It weren't  _original,_ but it did the trick. It gave Yondu something to focus on.

He pressed his tongue to the toe cap – clean, this time; thank the stars – lathering softly up the curve. And perhaps this was a bad idea after all, because each kittenish flutter and slower, longer lap, each low shiver of Yondu’s lashes and each bunch of those broad shoulders, all ate acid-sharp at Kraglin’s resolve.

Not a sexual thing. 

_Not a sexual thing._

But Yondu was hard. Yondu was needy. Yondu rocked against the air in stunted, mindless rolls. Yondu licked his fucking boots until they shimmered and bright spit-flecks threaded his beard.

His head bobbed, implant scattering light like sun through a stained-glass window. And Kraglin bent over him, rake-thin and yearning, cupping his nape so that he might stroke the division between collar and flesh.

“Good boy,” he said, testing the words. He tried not to feel ridiculous and failed magnificently. However, he needn’t have worried.

Yondu tensed. His pelvis shuddered, legs clamped closed in a bid at diverting bloodflow from his groin.

Then, gradually, he relaxed. He sunk over Kraglin's shoe with a grunt, and started to lick once more.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Kraglin patted him on the head after he finished.

He couldn’t tell you  _why,_ just that it seemed like the right thing to do. The implant felt different to how he expected - not cold like the collar, and with a faint texture to it, more like sandpaper than crystal.

The scars on Yondu's scalp slid satin-soft over his fingertips, but Kraglin pulled back when lingering on them made his captain shiver.

Yondu maintained his hunch, uncomfortable though it looked. If Kraglin ordered him to lean back on his haunches and show off the dick plumping out the left leg of his leathers, he'd do so - and then butcher him later, of course. Slowly.

Kraglin's lips scratched when he ran his tongue across them.

“I'm gonna,” he croaked, flapping one hand at the tray. “Bring the bowl back to the kitchen. Uh. Take that collar off if ya wanna.”

He'd grab some nosh for Yondu while he was at it – perhaps that would wash that odd bewildered look of his face, as if he'd been marooned in the empty wells between constellations, nothing with him but a spacemask and his own panicked breaths.

Kraglin stood, albeit unsteadily. He thanked the stars that his cup kept his cock from snaking towards Yondu. It slid through his slick, rolling back on top of itself.

He side-stepped around Yondu when it became apparent he had no intention of clearing the way, before giving himself a quick readjust, clamping the sucker-seal more firmly against his pubes.

“Alright,” he said, hooking the bowl one-handed and tucking the tray under his arm. “Mess hall. Be back in five.”

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

That five turned into ten. Then fifteen. Then, after Oblo accosted him with wringing hands and enquires about a certain AWOL Terran, half an hour.

Kraglin, carrying his bowl and tray to the scrubs pile, assessed the man in front of him, who gave him puppy eyes through a curtain of greasy hair. “What?”

“I  _said,_ have ya seen the -”

“No, I mean. Why're ya askin' me? I ain't Bridge crew.”

Oblo shrugged. He jigged from foot to foot, whipping his head about as if Quill might pop from any one of the corridors that opened onto the mess hall crossroad. “Don't worry, just say if ya ain't an' I'll get on...”

Kraglin couldn't catch his arm and give him a shake. Not with both hands occupied. He settled for scooting in front of him, sneer carving canyons through his stubble.

“The fuck ya will. Answer the question – why me?”

Oblo might have been of a nervous disposition, but at the end of the day, he was Bridge crew and Kraglin wasn't. In their loosely-structured and rarely-adhered-to hierarchy, that meant he deserved respect. His prancing halted, long enough for him to stick Kraglin with a glare.

“Because, ya idjit, cap'n likes ya.”

“ _What_?”

“You got any other words in yer vocabby-lairy? C'mon, he didn't kill ya after that nonsense with Trexi. Means he likes ya. Means you gotta chance of knowin' where the kid's got to – although ya obviously don't, so get the hell outta my way so I can track him down before cap'n gets out of his meeting.”

“Meeting?” Kraglin echoed.

“Not the brightest, are ya? Yeah, he got business. Private vid-conference with a client, in his cabin. Must be somethin' important; he ain't even let Tullk go with.”

Stars above. Kraglin shuddered at the concept.

“But anyway,” Oblo continued, feinting to one side and scooting to the opposite when Kraglin moved to obstruct, “I gotta get goin'. So've you, Mr. Boot Polish.” He nodded to the bowl Kraglin snagged off the near-depleted serving stack. “Unless ya want that crud to get colder than it already is.”

He had a point. He'd also given Kraglin plenty to think about, which he mulled over for the long tramp through winding corridors, down rust-speckled ladder chutes and through the crawlway shortcut that tucked the captain's cabin away from the Bridge while still residing within easy sprinting distance in an emergency.

Kraglin was still pouring over those words in his head as he barged into Yondu's door – and rebounded right off.

Huh?

Locked. Of course – he hadn't thought to stick a wedge in, and he wasn't coded into the biolock.

No problem. Kraglin cleared his throat, hemming over the backs of his hairy hands.

“Yondu? Cap'n, ya wanna let me in?”

Nothing but the grind of the engines far below.

It was a deep sound, a boom so low it made Kraglin's eardrums wobble like jelly. You only noticed it when you couldn't hear anything else.

Kraglin sighed. He placed the bowl on the floor by his newly-buffed boots.

“Cap'n?” he called again. “You in there?”

The silence persisted. Then, just as Kraglin was about to shrug and decide that cap'n had either gone to the loo, conked out, or was just being ornery: “You came back?”

The cabin door was airlocked, proofed against hull breaches should the Bridge and surrounding corridors explosively decompress. Sound couldn't travel through it, thanks to the vacuum seal sandwiched between two thick steel plates. But the microphones conveyed noises well enough. And while the crunch of static distorted the feedback, to Kraglin it sounded like Yondu's voice came from low down. Like Yondu had yet to rise from his kneel – or perhaps he'd slumped with his back to metal, glowering at his toy-studded floor.

Kraglin frowned. “You alright?” Then, when the silence became either ominous or sulky: “Wanna let me in, or what? I brought grub.” 

More silence. Kraglin suspected it was more to make a point than anything.

“Leave it outside,” said Yondu eventually. Kraglin rolled his eyes.

“It'll go cold.”

“S'already cold,” Yondu pointed out, not untruthfully. “Burner's broken under the last-call vat.”

“Huh. Issat so.” Kraglin shrugged, smile snagging like he'd caught a fish-hook under his lip.

He turned around, pressing his back to the cool metal. Despite Yondu's grouchies, giddiness twinkled in his guts, lighting him up from within. He cradled the bowl, thin fingers splaying around the smooth half-globe, like they would under Yondu's ass if the captain would only let him.

But now wasn't the time to think about that. The walk to the canteen returned Kraglin's cock to its usual state of equanimity.

It still threatened to wriggle back to life if he dared remember what Yondu hid from him, as Kraglin barked stilted orders and crooned  _good boy,_ and Yondu dragged his tongue over his boots until the leather was soft and sopping as the mess behind Kraglin's codpiece _..._

“More for me then,” he said, sliding to mirror Yondu's position. He made sure the spoon scraped the bowl extra loud. “Mm.”

The microphone wouldn't pick up on his lip-smacking, but Yondu boasted enough of an imagination to fill in the blanks.

“I said  _leave it there,_ a-hole. You disobeyin' a direct order from yer cap'n?”

“You agreed,” Kraglin singsonged around the spoon. “In the cabin, you ain't cap'n no more.”

A sharp intake of breath. A sub-vocal growl.

“So, idjit, ya  _don't_ backtalk me while you's outside it.”

Oh yeah. Probably not a good idea. But a little banter wouldn't burst the happy bubble in Kraglin's core.

“Don'tchu worry, Yondu. Ain't no one here but you an' me.”

“And Peter!” 

He wriggled out of the vent duct, whose dangling cover Kraglin should really have noticed, at least laterally in the part of his brain dedicated to storing potential future maintenance jobs spotted while wandering around.

Skinny legs kicked about. Their flailing would be comical if they didn't provide accompaniment to Yondu's furious silence. Peter's next question, after he dropped to the ground and landed with a clumsy roll, didn't help matters.

“Why don't you have to call Yondu captain? That's favoritism, boss.”

Another snarl. Kraglin almost expected the door to dent around four knuckles. It didn't, of course – he remembered that detail from Yondu's specs:  _the subject is of average strength for someone of his build, comparable with a Xandarian._ Hell, with Kraglin's wiry miner-muscle, he might just be able to pin him, so long as Yondu didn't throw any fancy moves his way, and – dammit, this was  _so not the time_ to be thinking about that.

Rather, he ought to be planning his own funeral. Which was imminent, if the way the door whooshed open was any indication.

“You,” Yondu growled, jabbing his crack-nailed pointer at Quill. “Where the hell's Oblo.”

“Lost him,” Peter said, with far too much pride. Kraglin's big eyes darted back and forth, expecting Yondu to deal his mischievous Terran a smack.

It didn't arrive.

Yondu's grin spread sedate as molten sunlight. He bestowed a hearty ruffle on the boy's tow-colored hair.

“Taught ya somethin', at least. Right. I'll punish him in the mornin'. As for  _you,_ Obfonteri _..._ ”

There went that smile. Kraglin gulped. He became suddenly and intimately aware of the soup smear clinging to the stubble under his lip.

“Uh,” he croaked, pushing the bowl along the floor. Its contents slopped as it skidded over uneven steel slabs. “For you?”

Yondu glared at the offering until Kraglin's shoulders began to tremor.

If he paid attention, really looked, didn't captain seem a little... off? Sweaty, paler than usual? Blue skin dulled to pastel?

“Sir?” he said, quieter. “You  _are_ alright, ain'tchu?”

Yondu returned his attention to Quill. “Go,” he said.

Quill held his ground a stubborn minute, chewing his tongue. Kraglin pulled a face at him over Yondu's shoulder. They were kinda having an important conversation here, and not one for children's ears.

Luckily, Yondu lost patience before Quill started pleading for him to promise not to make Kraglin stew.

" _Scat,_ " he repeated. Quill knew better than to make him ask four times in a row.

As he scrambled back into his vent, the scowl crumbled off Yondu's face. A strange desolation took its place, which Yondu seemed just as confused about as Kraglin.

Kraglin found his feet, somewhat shakily. He stepped forwards. He nudged the bowl insistently against Yondu's chest, and when that had no effect, picked up his hands – noting the chill of the smooth blue flesh – and wrapped them tight around it.

“C'mon, sir,” he said, nudging him backwards for the open door of his cabin. He shut it after them, sealing them in.

The room had a strangely cosy atmosphere, despite the unwashed underwear festering in one corner. Homely. Lived-in. Unmistakably Yondu's. His gimcrack hoard twinkled and uncharged PADDs fluxed, languishing toward the end of their battery-life.

He'd removed the collar.

Kraglin told himself he wasn't disappointed. However Yondu's eyes were still glassy _,_ and when Kraglin rekindled his interrogation - “Are you alright? Yer sure you're alright? I didn't hurtcha, or nothin'?” - Yondu didn't even snarl in response.

He shook his head at that last line of questioning, lifting spoon to mouth and back to bowl in automaton scoops.

He stared at a middle-distance, which rested on level with Kraglin's boots. Yondu took the bed, sweeping a semi-circle clear of his knickknacks. A crater sunk around his weight: a selection of colorful glass oddities rolled down the incline, pattering to rest against his thighs.

Kraglin didn't dare assume that was an invitation to sit besides him. But the chair remained where he'd left it, and Kraglin's gaze caught the flashback of light from the corner.

There it was. The collar, either discarded or flung.

He straddled the seat, arms folded over its back to keep a barrier between him and his captain.

“Good?” he asked. Yondu grunted. “Yeah, yeah. Mine sucked too. But who knows – maybe it's better cold?”

For some reason, the filler-conversation robbed some of the washiness from Yondu's stare. Not much, but at the very least his pupils flitted to Kraglin's for a second before he broke eye contact and returned to his naval-gazing.

“Ain't awful.”

“Hey, that's one sterling review, boss. I oughta tell the galley boys. They'll be real happy.”

That won a notch of a lip, almost a snigger. Kraglin grinned in the hopes it would be contagious.

“So what you gonna do about Quill?” he asked. “Kiddo slipped his guard. He on lav duty next cycle or what?”

Yondu blinked, as if he'd said something so incomprehensibly stupid that he had trouble processing it. “Why'd I  _punish_ him? Escapin' armed guard is a damn fine skill in a Ravager.”

Kraglin couldn't fault that. But his next question –  _what about Oblo –_ died on his tongue, when he realized Yondu's hunched posture had yet to unfurl, and that the man was examining his stained old duvet like he considered wrapping it around his shoulders.

The room felt balmy to Kraglin, practically tropical – and he was well-adapted to temperature fluctuations, having been selectively bred to ensure operational ability in environments from sub-zero to desert. But there was no mistaking the shivers that vibrated through Yondu, making his big shoulders intermittently fill out his jacket and squeeze small.

“Ya want yer coat?” Kraglin asked, motioning to the pile of stinking leather, abandoned on Yondu's floordrobe before they started their game.

“I ain't a child. I can fetch it if I want it.”

They sat for thirty more seconds, during which time the shivers only grew more pronounced. Kraglin sighed and bent to grab the coat. He froze when Yondu's spoon smacked off his hand, trailing spit and cold soup.

“I said, I'll fetch it!”

“Yeah, well.” Kraglin rubbed the red impact mark, scowl rueful. “Didn't see ya movin'. What'chu waitin' for, boss?”

The door had closed, but the collar wasn't on – safer therefore to maintain their professional dynamic. Less likely to see him dead.

When Yondu didn't reply, mouth a down-turned gash, Kraglin reached for the duster once more. He put his hands above his head, feigning innocence, when Yondu readied the bowl.

“Woah! No need for that. Can ya stop tossing things at me long enough to get warm, sir?” Then, in case this was yet another facet of that stupid, inflatable pride - “Not that I think ya can't handle it. Just, it'll make me feel better if yer comfortable.”

“Good thing I don't give a shit about ya then, ain't it Obfonteri?” But, at Kraglin's flat stare, Yondu heaved his coat onto his shoulders, scowling all the way. Loose trinkets thudded from the sleeves like glassy hail.

“There. Happy?”

Happy, but exasperated too. In a perfect galaxy, Kraglin would lean over the divide between chair and bed and kiss him, to prove which of those two states outweighed the other. But if there was one thing this universe was very far from, it was perfect.

“Sure am, sir,” he said. When Yondu held out his empty bowl – better than lobbing it at him, Kraglin supposed – he took the implicit dismissal, and his dirties too.

Cap'n didn't seem nearly so agitated as he had before their session. Grouchy, yes. Defensive? Absolutely.

The chilliness was strange – Kraglin suspected he needed to do more research on possible side-effects of subbing, as he couldn't fathom another likely cause. But other than that, the man was positively zen.

No more twitchiness. No more manic grins and spontaneous shifts from jocular to fire-spitting furious.

If he wanted to be left alone to savor his newfound calm, Kraglin could respect that.

“See ya tomorrow?” he asked, not without hope.

Yondu shook his head. Toys glinted around him, piled on every surface in teetering shrines and nailed to the wall like voodoo dolls. They made Kraglin's eyes ache from the vibrancy, as if he stood in a frozen kaleidoscope.

“Ya come here when I next call ya, boy. This is on my terms, remember?”

Kraglin nodded. “Course, sir. Just...”

“What?”

“Nothin'.”

“Huh.”

Yondu waited a few seconds, then pointedly flicked his gaze at the door. Kraglin stooped on his chair, grubby bowl in the crook of his arm. The familiar numbness stole into his fingertips. He squeezed them in and out of a fist, knuckle joints stretching and nails chewing on the meat of his palm.

“You goin' or what.”

“I just...”

“What!?”

Kraglin added 'dodging around a point' to his growing tally of  _things that piss off cap'n._

“Don't want you to get to the point where ya throw yer Bridge crew up against walls an' threaten to space 'em again, sir, is all. Ya don't got an infinite supply.” 

“I won't let it,” came the response. One look at Yondu's eyes told Kraglin they were about as convinced as each other.

“Well,” he said slowly, trying to make it sound like a suggestion rather than an order. “Maybe we could like. Make this a weekly thing. Y'know. So you don't gotta come to me.”

“I ain't scared of ya, jackass. Don't make me sound weak.”

“Wouldn't dream of it sir.” True. Whatever Yondu showed him as he presented his back for Kraglin's table, it wasn't weakness.

It was something different, something Kraglin didn't yet know how to define.

“Just thinkin' it'd be better for both of us. Y'know. Routine.”

“We're Ravagers. Laws are made to be broken.”

“Except Code, right?  _Steal from everyone, not each other._ ”

“Yeah, well.” Yondu looked down at himself, rearranging his leathery wings. His expression turned artfully stoic, the steep gradient of his brows the only indicator of sub-surface thoughts. “Codes get broken too.”

Whoops. Sore point – shoulda guessed. Kraglin juggled the bowl a little higher, patted the PADD in his pocket to ensure it hadn't tumbled out during all the excitement, and thumbed at the cabin door. “Want me to...?”

“I've wanted ya to for the past five minutes.” But when Kraglin scrambled vertical, Yondu relented. “I'll think about it. Ain't promisin' nothin'. But the weekly thing. I'll think about it.”

He'd just soothed his prickly hedgepig of a captain without being cussed out, tossed in the brig, or made to feel like an idiot. Kraglin wriggled his fingers gleefully, nerves reactivating in zigzags and pins.

This was  _progress._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh dear; Yondu has a praise kink. Major thanks to Lost Gryphon, HaviCat, Grumpybunny, Resri, Lamia-T and everyone else who left comments. You're all amazing people.


	6. Heat Helps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Trigger warning for attempted rape/noncon of the Yondu/Kraglin variety, and discussion of past CSA.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who want a summary - Kraglin gets into a fight with Taserface. He goes to Yondu's room afterwards. Yondu asks him if he wants him to discipline Taserface; Kraglin says no. Correct answer. Yondu tells him their relationship doesn't come with perks. They do some friendly Bro Bonding, and Yondu gets out a bottle. Before they can drink, whitefinger strikes. Kraglin spills the drink, but Yondu doesn't care. He asks about Kraglin's hands. After hearing heat helps, he sucks his fingers into his mouth.
> 
> Cue 'whuuuuuuut'.
> 
>  
> 
> Kraglin is, understandably, a bit bewildered. Yondu explains he used to be a sex slave before he was a battle slave, and has been servicing Kree since he was under ten. He then casually tells Kraglin this means it's okay if he wants to fuck him, because he's used to it.
> 
>  
> 
> Kraglin is now horrified. Kraglin tries to GTFO, but Yondu won't let him go. He tries to convince him to have sex with him, threatening, whistling, and eventually clinging to his legs and nuzzling desperately at his crotch. He's getting more and more pitiful, and Kraglin's getting more and more determined to leave. However, just before he does, he gives Yondu the PADD and tells him to research subbing properly.

 

Kraglin considered himself a cool kinda guy – not the sort to mark their next date on an internal calendar and wind down every hour. Or at least if he did, he didn't shout about it.

His mind cycled back to choice moments, a different one each time. It was as if every second of the session saved itself in high definition, and he summoned a new freeze-frame each night, to muse over as he drifted towards sleep’s great crevasse, hoping he visited the scene in his dreams.

The contrast of metal on blue skin.

The slow drag of Yondu's tongue over Kraglin's boot cap, spittle shining the leather.

Yondu’s back, so perfectly still as Kraglin balanced the tray, cupping his nape to soothe him.

The heat of his scarred neck bones under his palm.

It was all so vivid, so _real._ Or at least, it was to begin with. But as film faded from sunlight exposure, so too did the tactile details diminish as the week dragged on.

Normality slunk in.

Kraglin and Marigold settled into their rhythm of endless maintenance.

Mamet annoyed him with his general existence.

Half-nut made weird noises in his sleep.

And the captain? Well, the captain pretended he didn't exist. Just like they’d agreed.

However, normality wasn’t quite as normal as usual. Kraglin brought it on himself. What did he expect, intervening in a fight between officers? He’d interrupted Yondu's face-off with Trexi in the tunnel by the Bridge in front of a hefty portion of crew. The six-ish male Nazghians on board made Kraglin harder to differentiate, but not three days after the captain ordered him into his cabin (and, more remarkably, Kraglin was seen alive again afterwards), the consequences of Kraglin’s actions came to bite him in the ass.

Or, more accurately, hook him by the armpit and yank him into a storage closet, as he was mooching about dodging work.

His accoster wasn’t a regular crewman. For a moment, he prayed it was Trexi, armed with gratitude and that crazy-cat-lady smile. No such luck.

The storeroom had a gritty texture to it, choked with dust and lit by a loose-swinging bulb. Kraglin blinked several times, clearing the itch from his eyes as he followed the fingers along an arm, swaddled in straps and buckles and scrappy leather.

He found a scruffy beard at its opposite end. Above that loomed a tattooed face, and a mat of blonde dreadlocks framing a scowl.

“Tullk,” he squeaked.

Pulling yielded poor results. He gained nothing but the rise of Tullk's eyebrows, distorting his tattoo like the web of a spider on LSD. 

“Whassup, man? You want something fixed, ya gotta go through Horuz...”

“I don't want nothing fixed,” Tullk said. His accent was strange and lilting, one Kraglin had yet to place. “I just wanna know what you're doin’ with me cap'n.”

Kraglin pulled his best confused face. He did his best to cleanse his thoughts of collars, tongues, and blue. “I ain't got the first clue what'cher -”

“Don't play games with me, boy!”

Tullk dropped him – but only so that he could ball his fists in Kraglin's collar instead. He hauled him sideways along the shelves, sending buckets clanging, mops clattering, and solvent sachets splattering to the floor.

“I ain't stupid! You tell me, an' you tell me now. The hell ain't you dead?”

“Well,” Kraglin choked, squeezing Tullk's forearms in search of a pressure point. “Ain't that the question for the ages?”

His head clonked something solid when Tullk shook him. Kraglin grimaced. Pain hammered nails behind his eye sockets. It struck like nausea; a coil that cinched tighter as Tullk hissed.

“If ya think he's gonna protect ya...”

Kraglin snorted, ears ringing. “I ain't stupid.”

For some reason, Tullk quit grinding his jaw like he planned on wearing out his molars. “You sayin' he wouldn't?”

“I'm sayin' I wouldn't bet my life on it.” That last question sounded more like genuine curiosity than an interrogation. Knuckles brushed Kraglin’s windpipe. Rather than straining away he leant over them, crushing his throat to get in Tullk’s face. “Hey. Why ain't ya askin' him this?”

“Huh?”

Kraglin hesitated. Would pressing invite a fist through his thorax?

Tullk made the decision for him. His nostrils flared an inch from his face. Twin streams broke over his stubble, hot as dragon breath.

“I said, _huh?_ ”

If he really wanted to know... Kraglin coaxed his dry tongue into swallowing.

“I said, why're ya askin' me? Even if I knew what cap'n wants, he would've ordered me not to tell, right?”

Tullk’s scowl quavered. Was it Kraglin's imagination, or had his hand loosened on his neck?

“What you sayin'?”

“Jus'... Jus' that yer pickin' on the wrong guy, is all. And I would ask _why,_ but...” He trailed off. _I think we both know the reason._

That reason both started and ended with a 'w', and had 'histle-controlled arro' in the middle.

Tullk squinted at him. Well, Tullk squinted constantly – like he'd taken something acidic to the skin around his eyes. His attempt to blot the scarring with tattoos only made his blue slits all the slyer. But this time, that glare was every bit as suspicious and evaluative as it looked.

“Go ask Yondu, if ya really wanna know,” Kraglin said. Then – daringly – he shoved Tullk in the chest, right over the buckles for his hip holsters.

It was a pleasant surprise when rather than taking a swing, Tullk stepped back.

“You hurt him,” he said – growled, really. “You betray him, you talk shit behind his back, you ever fuckin' _dare_ stab him in it? It won't just be him you answer to, boy. Understand me?”

Interesting. That was considerably more sentiment than the average Ravager allowed themselves to show.

Kinda like his confrontation with Trexi in the mess. Shovel talks all around.

Yondu shared a strange camaraderie with the prime members of his Bridge crew. Kraglin did his best not to think about it, if only because it made him jealous.

Was now a bad time to ask how Tullk and Yondu met? Undoubtedly. Was Kraglin tempted? Absolutely.

But before he could try, Tullk's PADD emitted a high-pitched shrill. Kraglin nodded.

“Should probably...”

“Yeah.” Tullk stayed right where he was for another five heartbeats. Admittedly, this wasn't especially long; Kraglin's pounded faster than the valves in an M-ship cylinder.

The first mate pressed the button on his PADD, reading the scrolling message in two quick passes of his eyes. He dismissed it before Kraglin could decipher the first sigil upside-down.

The last look Tullk shot him before swivelling to the exit was scathing enough to shrivel offal. “Remember what I said.”

Kraglin nodded. He found it hard to forget.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The week crawled by. Kraglin snarled at Mamet and tiptoed around Marigold, terrified that the slightest word would result in an encore of the crying incident. And he thumbed through his manual, which he had skimmed cover to cover, until he reached the section entitled _aftercare._

As far as he could tell, he hadn't done anything wrong.

He fetched Yondu food, kept him warm – both were important, apparently. Sure, it'd taken him a while, and perhaps he _could've_ been clearer about his intentions, told Yondu he planned on coming back and so forth.

But so sue him. Barring the first boot-licking debacle, it had been his first time.

And Yondu had been horny, writhing from the need to hide it. Kraglin panicked, just a little. Better to scarper before he did – or said – something he'd regret.

Something like _I'll sort that out for ya, boss._

Kraglin sighed. The missed opportunity swarmed his brain, different potentialities playing out one after the next. If he'd said it in that assertive tone, and with the right wattage of leer…

Would Yondu have done it? Would he have rolled over and presented himself without further thought?

Kraglin licked his lips. He _liked_ that.

However, Yondu stipulated _no sex,_ and _no sex_ he meant. No matter what his body wanted, no matter how he shuddered with the effort of denying himself.

He’d obviously been lying about how much he got off on subbing – his reaction to Kraglin's _good boys_ proved that. However, he still sketched a line between the stars. Kraglin would never dare tread across it. He wasn’t suicidal.

And, more than that, he didn’t want to see Yondu hurt.

Stupid. Kraglin didn't get attached easily. The mines were a callous place that grew callous people.

Survival was more a matter of fortune than intelligence or strength. Kraglin learned early on that making friends was a surefire way to get hurt.

Not physically, unless you were dumb enough to race into the landslide after them. A different sort of hurt. It kept you awake through your night shift, clenching and unfurling your shaky white-numb fingers and trying to recall every detail of their face, hating that it faded as their pod cleared out and their miner's pick and light returned to the commissary, to be snapped up by the next thin child to graduate from the Hurrying ranks.

Kraglin shook his head. He cleared his throat and put on his most sultry face.

“I'll sort that out for ya, boss,” he husked. Then, when his voice cracked on the last word, he repeated himself in a more natural register: “I'll sort that out for ya, boss.”

No, too squeaky that time.

He couldn't sound nervous. That was the whole point of this game. Yondu had to believe he was in charge, so Kraglin had to believe it too.

“I'll sort that out for ya,” he said one final time – before Taserface and co. sauntered in from the wash room, Half-nut straining moss from his lank brown hair.

Upon seeing Kraglin close-to-kissing with his reflection, his grin spread over his cheeks.

“Ooh! Looks like Obfonteri's got a girl! Who you sortin' out what for, huh?”

Kraglin disliked bullies. He'd been one himself to the Hurrying kids, but back then they all knew their place in the pecking order. The Graders looked down on the Hewers and the Foremen on them, and the Hurriers gave the Breaker Boys smacks upside the head and stuck out their tongues whenever they passed.

Now that Kraglin had escaped his caste, he didn't want to be reminded of it. He and Half-nut were of the same ranking.

Kraglin shrugged. “Nothin'.” He cleared the manual, thumbing sideways across the board then back the other way to dismiss the chapter menu.

Half-nut's shrewd eyes picked up on the movement. He darted forwards, swiping the PADD with a cackle.

“What'chu got here, Kraggly-waggly?”

Kraglin's teeth grit. “Don't call me that. And give it back, dammit. Ain't nothin' of interest.”

Half-nut danced backwards, waving the PADD like a lure. In the corner of the locker room, Taserface and Gef buried themselves in their leathers, tugging them over barrel-bellies that would outweigh Kraglin if the pair were eviscerated and their giblets slopped onto the opposite side of the scale.

Half-nut was the only one he had a prayer against, hand to hand. He was outnumbered and outclassed. The temptation to swing still gnawed on him as Half-nut toggled through the holo-icons, squinting at the read-outs.

“Is it a diary?”

“Give it back!” Then, because the force of his shout had surprised even him - “It's engineerin' manuals. Nothin' you'd find excitin', but I need it if I wanna stop fixin’ solars all cycle.”

Not actually a lie. Kraglin nurtured his ambitions religiously.

He genuinely wanted to progress, to graduate from fixing leaky pipes and shorted circuits to overseeing the fusion output of the _Eclector's_ mighty thrusters. This whole business with Yondu and the collar was a fun distraction, but mastering the fusion equations remained a solid goal.

The link Trexi gave him sat innocuous, surrounded by other icons from text books to case studies to engineering dictionaries. Those came into play whenever Kraglin’s limited lexicon required him to look up a word (so every fifth sentence. As it had been multiple times per phrase when he first started, he considered that good headway.)

Half-nut mouthed the words to himself, stumbling over _thermonuclear dynamics._ He shuffled rearwards, matching Kraglin's stealthy prowl so the PADD remained out of reach.

It wouldn't be long before he realized one of the icons wasn’t like the others. Kraglin affected a frustrated face – not difficult – and turned to the powerhouse of the trio.

“Hey Taserface, buddy? Think ya could get him to give this back? I've gotta go tutor one of the new chicks, an' I need that to -”

“One of the ex-slaves, ya mean?” Taserface snorted. Air from his melty nostrils blasted his moustache, plastering it to his burnt top lip. “Pathetic. Cannon fodder's all them lot’re good for.”

Hell. There was no way he _didn't_ know about the sort of shit their boss went through.

“Think ya should be careful what you say, Taserface.”

“Was that a threat?” Fastening his jacket over his torso – the burns trailed downwards like he'd been doused under an oil shower and lit alight – Taserface took a step forwards, Half-nut scrambling to get out of his path. “Did that sound like a threat to ya, Geff?”

Geff shrugged. “I dunno, sir. More like a warnin', to be honest.”

Taserface and Kraglin exchanged a look, Taserface's exasperated, Kraglin's relieved with a side of shrug.

“Like he said. Just don't want the wrong person hearin' ya, is all.”

“There ain't many on this ship truly loyal to Udonta, 'cept those he keeps around him on the Bridge.” Taserface’s eyes scrunched into piggy raisins. “Fewer who can stop him killin' someone he's set his sights on. How'd ya get in the cap'n's pocket so fast, Obfonteri? We was part of the same intake, but Udonta don't know my name.”

His smirk split the bush of his beard.

“Don't tell me yer warmin' his dick?”

“What? No! The hell, Taserface? It ain't like that. Gross.”

Like he didn't think about it as he lay in his bunk at night. Or better yet, the slow pulse of his cock into whatever holes Yondu might be rocking down below. He'd move steady as the tide, hoisting his captian’s hips to slot in every undulating inch...

His timer beeped. The steam from the laundry pod made his Mohawk fluff. Every exhale raked, hot sauna air scratching his throat. He pointed to the opened hatch, eyes pleading.

“Guys, c'mon. I'm gonna be late to clock shift.”

“Aw,” sniggered Half-nut, bobbing behind Geff's broad shoulder, waggling the PADD the whole while. “He said _please. Pwease, Mr Taserface, lemme have my books back. Pwease, Mr Udonta, lemme crawl on yer lap an' -_ ”

Kraglin's fists clenched. “I said it ain't like that!”

“Then whas this book here for? _A Beginner's Guide to –_ oh. Hey, Taserface. Lookit this. Seems ya pegged Obfonteri right after all...”

Shit. If Taserface, who was observing Kraglin's fluxing expressions with far too much intelligence, caught wind of Kraglin's favored reading material... If he twigged that it was about him and Yondu...

Kraglin refused to be the spark to the tinder that lit Yondu's pyre. He wouldn't do it. He couldn't.

If he had to take a beatdown, so be it.

He launched himself at Half-nut, dodging Geff and plowing into the scrawny man's liver.

He slammed him back against the lockers, and while he clawed at the air, set to delivering as many body-punches, elbows and kicks as he could.

Half-nut's hands spasmed. He dropped the PADD when Kraglin tugged it. His skinny forearms did little to defend himself as Kraglin drove bony knuckles into his gut.

But no good thing lasted. Before he could finish off with a knee to the bollocks that would have Half-nut living up to his name (assuming he wasn't already) a scarred hand clamped on his shoulder.

Taserface ate Kraglin's vision. There was simply so _much_ of him.

He went up and out far further than Kraglin on every axis. If the pair were viewed from behind, he would be invisible, swallowed by Taserface’s bulk.

Kraglin gulped. The hand on his shoulder migrated to his face, knuckles brushing his nose.

He heard Half-nut hyperventi-wheezing a few paces away, and Geff's insistent 'huhs?' when no one told him what was going on.

“You gonna hit me?” he asked, channelling a brazenness he didn't feel.

Taserface smirked, and Kraglin found out.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 By the time he reached Yondu's quarters, the nosebleed had slowed to a crawl.

The hot gunge clagged at the back of his throat. He kept swallowing, and whenever he caught the tail end of a clot the whole thing spilled down after it: a choking slug that tasted overpoweringly of copper.

He sniffed, best as he could. He bumped the door with a hand that ached after being brought into contact with Half-nut's ribcage several times in quick succession.

The PADD remained tucked in the pouch in his belt, its read-out a little fuzzy where condensation had built under the glass.

“Sir?” he said, addressing the mic. The nasal twang made him wince. “S'Obfonteri. Can I come in?”

No response – not that Kraglin was expecting one. But the next moment, the gate crumpled back upon itself, a rectangle of sheet metal that compressed across invisible crease lines until it lay tight to the frame.

Yondu stood there, with the surliest expression Kraglin had seen him wear unaccompanied by the arrow. He'd pumped himself up for this, like one of them tunnel rats that puffed out its fur when you backed it into a corner.

Kraglin, ruddy sluice coating the bottom half of his face, was far from at his most threatening. Yondu's brows twitched up. So did the corner of his mouth, and he snagged his top lip on his little bottom fangs for a full ten seconds before he realized he couldn't maintain his composure. He released the laugh in a belching guffaw.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Kraglin as Yondu propped himself against the doorframe, braced on Kraglin's shoulder, warm hand blazing through the jumpsuit. “Get it over with, sir.”

Yondu did so. He was inarticulate with glee, pushing and shoving at Kraglin's collar in time with his chuckles.

Kraglin stood stoic under the onslaught, until his scowl cracked at the edges and he giggled too.

That only set Yondu off harder, and as an afterthought, Kraglin nudged him back through the doorway, scooching quickly after him before the automated lock function could snap on.

“Don't want no one overhearin',” he said in explanation, as Yondu steadied himself on the bedside table, still assailed by the occasional snigger, and wiped his eyes.

Shiny pink eyes. They reminded Kraglin of rubies, the ones his miner crew plucked from the cores of asteroids that had broken off of planets large enough to house tectonic activity.

He had to swallow before he could speak again.

“It'd ruin yer big bad space pirate reputation, if they knew you was gigglin' at my predicky-whassit.”

“Predicament,” Yondu corrected, as Kraglin had hoped he would. He dared for a smirk, gesturing around the room as if to ask where he ought to sit, until Yondu lifted and dropped the shoulder on the bed side of his body, and proceeded to join him after pacing around the room like a settling tiger.

That was how they found themselves: a pair mismatched in height and breadth and color, perched side-by-side with a few plastic wind-up toys and a pillow's length of sheet between them.

Kraglin glanced at Yondu from the corner of his eye. “Knew you was smart, boss.”

Yondu scoffed. “Course I am. Couldn't stay in charge of you lot if I weren't, could I?”

“True. Hey – this's a damn fine berth. Whaddo I gotta do to get one like it?”

“Become first mate.”

Okay, so hoping Yondu would say 'fuck the cap'n' was a bit too much to ask for. But hey – this was something.

Kraglin shrugged, falling back. His bony body cut a steep-sided valley into the mattress.

“Too much hassle. Leave that to Tullk. I'm a better engineer anyway.”

“Yer also new here,” Yondu pointed out. He didn't flump to join him, and for a moment Kraglin wondered if that was an overstep – because, as Yondu would no doubt remind him if given half the chance, they were very far from friends. “Barely knew how to shoot a blaster when we picked ya up.”

“I did too!”

“Yeah, jus' not so ya actually hit the target.” Yondu nabbed a pillow from the foot of the bed, where it had been kicked during the night and never retrieved. He lobbed it to bounce off Kraglin's chest. “Oi. Don'tchu get blood on my sheets.”

Kraglin couldn't say  _why, worried people'll think you play rough?_ Not without risking another punch.

“S'all dry,” he settled for, scratching the itchy crust to demonstrate. “Taserface got me good.”

“Taserface?” Yondu echoed. “What sorta dumb name's  _Taserface?_

“I  _know!_ ”

“So's that why ya came here? Wantin' me to toss him in Brig?”

Why did that sound like a test? Kraglin wedged himself against the bed, pushing up until he could look at Yondu crunched, weight on his elbows. The man sat slouched, seemingly uncaring for his answer.

“Nah,” said Kraglin, striving for an even voice. “I got this.”

“Good. Cause what we do, it don't come with perks.”

Seemed he'd made a good call. Kraglin raised his hands. Then, when that had him flopping on his back like a flipped turtopede, sat and repeated the motion.

“Weren't plannin' on askin', sir. Swear it.” Yondu grunted noncommittally and turned away – hell, did the guy have trust issues or what? “Unless ya can get me to the front of the mess line.”

“Huh?”

“Y'know, that thing Quill does?”

No dice.

“When he heads to mess and hollers 'first dibs, cap'n's orders' and everyone gets out of his way?”

Yondu's jaw drops. “He does  _what?_ ”

“Aw. Ya didn't know?” Kraglin rumpled his raggedy mohawk. “Uh. Don't tell the brat I grassed on him or nothin'.”

“What, and lose my informant? S'bad for business.”

They sniggered together, and for a moment it felt damn near comfortable. Then Yondu shuffled an inch in.

Kraglin held deathly still.

He let him close the gap. He didn't dare twitch for fear he'd break the peace: ruin it, make Yondu spook and startle and flee like some wild thing...

But wild though he might be, Yondu was anything but skittish. He shunted his weight along the covers until their knees bumped, thighs pressed together in a sweaty seam, sweeping the toys to either side. Most tumbled towards the headboard, though a few unlucky specimens thumped the floor.

An arm slung across Kraglin's shoulders. The bicep spread, heavy and warm, weighing him down.

It was so simple, so matter-of-fact. The sudden thunder in Kraglin's ears made spit clog his windpipe, hands spasming, and...

Fuck.  _No._ Not whitefinger. Not now.

The bloodflow ran cold. The numbness spread as Yondu chuckled, and the portion of his chest resting on Kraglin's side vibrated in synchrony.

Their leathers caught, tackier than skin. Yondu had to pull to unstick them so that he could crawl to the other side of the bed. Once there, rather than finding a pillow to prop his hips, as the part of Kraglin that was still very much an undersexed twenty-something hoped, he fished around in the crack between the mattress and the rusted metal headboard.

“Wanna drink?”

It was a flashback to the first time they attempted this. Now, as then, when Yondu drew out the bottle, Kraglin could only nod.

His chilly fingers twitched, sluggish and unresponsive. Yondu uncorked with a sharp twist of sharper teeth and spat it to one side.

When he shoved the bottle into Kraglin's grip, it slithered straight through.

Glug, glug, glug. Three noisy drams emptied onto the sheets.

Kraglin stomped down the panic. He scooped it up.

He managed to pour another streak over his lap, which he'd be mocked for unless Yondu had any pants that fit him (doubtful) or would lend them to him after this stunt (moreso).

“Fuck – shit – stars-damned – fuck -”

Pawing at the sheets proved useless. It had already soaked in: a wet patch that matched the seep of horror in Kraglin's gut. “I'm sorry! M'so fuckin' sorry, boss” -

Yondu scoffed. He bounced forwards on his knees, sitting on the stain without a care. The bottle got evacuated to the safety of the bedside table, and Yondu turned his attention to Kraglin.

“What's this?” He poked the pad of Kraglin's thumb. “Don' tell me ya got star-leprosy.”

“I – I don't got star-leprosy, sir.”

Yondu turned his hand over, assessing front then back. “Ya sure?”

“Course I'm sure! Look, it's jus' – We call it  _whitefinger,_ in the mines.” He waggled them demonstratively. Shocks twanged his tendons like he'd grabbed a live wire.

“S'from drilling equipment," he told Yondu, quietly. "Ya get it after you've been hole-boring too long.”

“Hole-boring?”

“Yeah. Punishment duty. Dangerous job – causes cave-ins.”

The booming reverberation of rock on rock, deafening through his earplugs. The flailing limbs as men sprinted for the end of the N-stope, only to be buried under tons of rubble and gangue. The loamy stink of dirt, sediment settling muddy in his lungs as his arms pumped and his heart pounded and his legs drove him forwards until wiry muscle strained to rupture-point, bloodless fingers clenched in desperate fists...

Kraglin shuddered. Swallowed. Broke Yondu's gaze.

“Weakens the mine structure,” he continued. “So course, no one wants to do it. They use it as disciplinary.”

“Huh.” Yondu traced one finger, tip to base and back again. He was doing that thing again, the one that drove a primal part of Kraglin wild: catching his lip between his teeth, fangs scraping vulnerable flesh. “You get disciplined a lot?”

Kraglin snorted. “Have ya met me?”

Yondu was still staring at him, and when Kraglin worked up the courage to meet his eyes, he found confusion.

“You ain't been nothin' but loyal. Ain't many Ravagers I'd trust with this."

The compliment, mild as it was, made his chest fuzz, a feeling not unlike when the Hewers breached a trapped bubble of nitrogen gas. Like there was laughter in his veins, hypoxia a breath away.

“Guess I'm just a better Ravager than a miner, sir.”

“Hm.” Yondu returned to his fingers. He gathered them in a broad blue paw. The warmth of his skin – high metabolism species, or something; Kraglin was no biologist – made similar heat creep up Kraglin's neck. At least, that was his excuse. “This help?”

“Uh – y-yeah. I guess. I was always told keep 'em hot, keep 'em movin' – oh. I, uh. I didn't mean, ya don't gotta -”

Yondu raised his bundle of fingers to his lips. He shot Kraglin a challenging smirk. Then he opened his mouth and plunged 'em deep.

Oh  _stars._

His tongue rubbed his knuckle, wet and soft. He hollowed his cheeks and dragged Kraglin's fingertips towards the back of his throat.

Kraglin was only a mortal man. He couldn't help but imagine what Yondu's sweet little suckles might feel like, were they transferred from his hand to his dick.

Kraglin resisted the urge to tweak his cup. If his cock escaped, he'd know about it. For one thing, it'd raise the fabric all down his pant leg.

 Yondu shifted sidesaddle on the bed. His throat buzzed around a moan, eyes sultry slits.

Kraglin's finger spasmed. The nail scraped the groove in Yondu's tongue. He swore he scratched tastebuds – although numbness gnawed on the top half of his hand, each fingertip a blizzard of glitching nerves. His dick slithered like a coiled snake, nosing the edge of the suction cup, probing for weakness in the seal.

Kraglin plastered a hand over his crotch. His other was busy, massaged by the roll of Yondu's cheeks and his slow-squirming tongue.

Yondu pushed forwards so the circle of his lips met the root. The extravagant groan would've made Kraglin giggle under other circumstances. As it was, it was all he could do to blurt:

“The hell're ya doin', sir?”

Yondu's eyes opened, long enough to treat him to a Look. It managed to convey 'the hell do you think', without vocalizing a word.

Kraglin dug his palm into the cup. Fuck.

He'd cherish that image for the rest of his days: his cap'n, kneading his leatherclad thighs as he swallowed his pooling saliva. Kraglin could smell it: stale breath and sour spit. He could imagine how it tasted – or he could find out for himself.

But first, he needed to clear something up.

"I thought'chu said this weren't... That it weren't... y'know... sexy.”

Because that was definitely a prick filling Yondu's inseam. Kraglin would very much like to lavish it with the same attention Yondu paid to his fingers: coiling his tongue around each, slickening them in turn, rubbing the grazes on his knuckles and flexing them far enough down his throat to prove he didn't have a gag reflex.

“Where'd ya learn to do that?”

Yondu spat his hand out long enough to answer. “I weren't just a battle slave, y'know.”

“Huh?”

“Ya heard me. I was used for more than fightin'. Trained up from real young – since before I can remember. I been riding cock since I was ten and sucking it for longer. Made to fuckin' serve.” He made to swallow Kraglin's fingers again.

Kraglin's heart drummed louder than mining drills. Had he heard him correctly? Had he really said...?

“ _What?_ ”

Spit. Sigh. Kraglin's fingers gleamed. “You deaf as yer ugly?”

“N-no, I just... I just don't understand, thas all. What'chu sayin'?”

“I'm sayin',” said Yondu, as if he was explaining a simple concept of spacefarer physics, like wormholes or faster-than-light propulsion, to a slack-jawed Quill, “that I know some shit. And -” He gave Kraglin's wet fingers a squeeze, lifting them so the light glistened through their coruscant coating. “I could show ya. If ya wanted.”

Kraglin couldn't help it. He yanked away. The spitty glove helped – his hand shot from Yondu's grip like it had been greased.

“ _What_?”

“Issat all ya can say?”

“Wha – I mean, no! And n-no to that too! Fuck, Yondu.”

Yondu whistled under his breath – a menacing, mocking sound. Kraglin flinched so hard he almost bashed his ears cauliflower with his shoulders. But Yondu only smirked at him, implant glancing red beams to the left and the right as he shook his head.

“Thas the general idea.  _Fuck._ C'mon then – I can always  _order_ ya -”

Kraglin froze. Then he pushed to his feet. His spit-wet fingers burned, achingly cold.

Was Yondu really confused? He sounded it as he scrabbled off the bed after him, dislodging bedclothes in luxuriant puddles of fur.

“The hell, Obfonteri? Whas this all about? Ya just gonna walk out on me?”

Kraglin turned to him, face as white and pinched as his hands.

“Ya just crossed a line,  _cap'n,_ ” he sneered.

Then he did what he should've done the moment Yondu extended this crazy offer. He marched the fuck out.

Or at least he tried. The arrow, quivering in the door lock, made that difficult.

Kraglin stared at the sparking panel. The bright flares ate at his retina as if he was watching the corona around an eclipse.

“Thas gonna be a bugger to fix,” he said neutrally.

“Lucky I got an engie on hand then.”

“So what now?” Kraglin turned, the arrow still wobbling in his peripheral vision. He found Yondu in front of the bed, rumpled and hard and furious. Kraglin forced his aching fingers into fists. “You fuckin' rape me? Like the shit they used to do to you, back when ya couldn't say no?”

“What? Naw, that weren't – I had fun, yeah?” Yondu seemed offended at the very insinuation. “Never once said no.”

“Oh  _hell.”_

“ _What?_ ”

Best not to throw Yondu's complaints about repetition back at him. Not unless he wanted that arrow buried in his skull instead of a door frame.

“I ain't paid enough to deal with this,” Kraglin muttered.

Whitefinger made everything tingle, like when you stuck a frozen limb under a hot-tap. Punching would hurt, but better that than Kraglin take whatever was coming without a fight.

“You got some fucked up ideas about what makes a  _yes_ an' what makes a  _no._ I can see that. But Yondu? This right here?  _This is a no.”_

Yondu laughed. It wasn't an especially nice sound. It sounded like it hurt him.

 _Good,_ Kraglin thought vindictively, as Yondu whistled the arrow to probe menacingly at Kraglin – then, as if in afterthought, back to his belt.

“I understand that,” he said. Crossed his arms and all, as if he were the victim here. As if he hadn't just threatened to abuse his rank to make Kraglin do whatever he pleased. “I ain't forcin' nobody. All I'm sayin's that if ya wanted to dick me, I'm up for it, and I don't fuckin' understand why the hell yer freakin' out about it when  _you_ was the one to let yer fingers sit in my mouth for a whole fuckin' minute.”

Kraglin gaped at the injustice. “You sucked 'em there! I was too shocked to react.”

“Bullshit! You was enjoyin' it, an' ya know it! If it weren't for that” - he pointed to the cup, whose lump rounded out Kraglin's groin - “you'd be just as into it as I am.”

He framed his dick through the leather.

Kraglin's mouth watered – he couldn't deny it. But at the same time, as attractive as he found his captain – legs kicked wide, chest thrust out and chin firmed, all rugged jawline and crooked snarl – he also couldn't do... this.

“Take yer goddamn slave fetish elsewhere,” he growled, turning to size up the spitting panel. “I want no part in it. I'm gonna fix this, and then I'm outta here.”

And with that, he stooped so the panel was on eye-level and wriggled his rubber screwdriver from his utility belt so he could pry off the outer casing without falling foul of a zap. 

“So,” said Yondu, gravelly and low. “That means I got until ya fix it to change yer mind.”

Kraglin bristled. Before he could snap back that  _no,_ that wasn't what he'd meant at all, Yondu slunk forwards, sinking to his knees beside him.

He was a big guy. His grace was the prowling, predatory sort of big felines, and when he purred, ducking to nuzzle Kraglin's thigh, it rumbled along every muscle, his body a curved blue tuning fork.

Kraglin pushed him away. Not hard enough to deserve retaliation of the whistly sort – or so he hoped. Unfortunately, this meant that Yondu wasn't dissuaded.

He moved back in, stubble scratching leather. His nose dug into Kraglin's pelvis. His hands, big blue hands, held Kraglin in place.

Kraglin chewed his lip and glared at the glitching panel. All he had to do was fix the damn thing. Simple. He carried spare relays in his belt, and he'd performed the replacement procedures – a twist, a snap, a clamp and a tug to ensure it was all fastened – a thousand times.

But in order for that he had to concentrate.

And in order for  _that_ he had to stop Yondu from mouthing kitten-soft at his jumpsuit.

Dammit.

He couldn't give in. No matter how happily his cock squeezed itself in the cup, no matter the endorphins running rampant through his blood. He  _couldn't._

_I weren't just a battle slave. I was for more than fightin'._

_Trained up from young._

_Since I was ten._

_Can show you, if ya wanna._

_I liked it._

Whatever had been done to Yondu – and Kraglin  _knew,_ because he weren't fucking stupid, but that didn't mean he wanted to acknowledge it, even in the privacy of his own mind – it was some messed up shit. It had to be, to make a guy crave this sort of contact. Hell, Kraglin could really use something watertight to chunder in, right about now.

Just because he reacted to the warm, humid moan across the outside seam of his pant leg, the curl of fingers into the loose fabric where it gathered above his boot, it didn't mean he wanted it.

He wouldn't add to the tally of those who hurt his cap'n – even if the man didn't realize it, or refused to call it by that name for the sake of his own damn sanity.

He snapped the last of the botched wires, dropping the clippings to scatter over Yondu's crown. They tumbled over implant and bald blue skull, gathering in the fluff of his collar.

Yondu must realize that the end was nigh.

His movements became more hurried. His nails scraped Kraglin's thighs with a frenzy. He hugged the leg he was closest to, rubbing his crotch against the boot, clamping his thighs around the ankle so Kraglin had no choice but to feel the weight between them.

The moans had a distinctly forced quality. When Kraglin finished his patch job – enough to have the door reeling open an inch; he could force it the rest of the way – he glanced down and caught Yondu's gaze for a split second.

Desperate. Demanding. 

_Don't leave me. Don't you dare._

Kraglin did, but not without effort. 

“You need to let go now,” he said. “Sir.”

Yondu crushed his throat on Kraglin's kneecap like he was trying to choke himself. His neck flexed around a swallow, nails distraught needle points that kneaded Kraglin's bony hip.

“If ya walk out there after this,” he grated, “I ain't got no choice but to kill ya.”

Kraglin sighed. “Course ya do. Yer cap'n. Now leggo.”

“If I do, you ain't comin' back.”

No sense lying. “Prolly not, no. Don't think it's healthy, sir. For either of us.”

His shackle squeezed one final time, Yondu exhaling for so long that Kraglin expected it to end in a sob.

None emerged. Yondu was still captain, after all.

He simply nuzzled Kraglin's thigh one last time and pulled away, shuffling to slump against the doorframe. He looked defeated. Older than his years. Like the worn-out old fuck-slave he was.

Kraglin couldn't tell you what changed his mind. Not if he meditated on the matter for the next decade. But for whatever reason, he slid the PADD out of his pocket and pushed it across the floor.

“Here,” he said gruffly.

Yondu didn't look at the PADD. But he did peer up at Kraglin, just briefly, before averting his gaze to the floor.

“Read it. 'Specially the crap on 'subbing' and shit. Might help you out for the future.”

Then, clamping down on guilt for encouraging Yondu's... whatever-the-fuck it was, Kraglin turned and marched away.

Phantom warmth snuggled his foot long after Yondu's body heat faded. It soothed the jar of his returning ingrown toenail when he stubbed it on the intake hatch for his dorm – but not by much.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to my commenters from the last chapter. As ever, you give me the energy to write.


	7. Deep Space Nine-One-One

He didn't see Yondu for a week and a half after that. Then, on the ninth astral cycle, after Kraglin lost patience and pried out the ingrown toenail with aid of moonshine and a knife, it happened.

Kraglin was almost willing to admit to himself that he was watching the chronometers whirl, measuring the time it took for him and his cap'n to clash again. But it wasn't Udonta who barged into his work station, head poking between the boilers to where Kraglin lay on his back, tools spread over his chest, jiggling at a stubborn lugnut.

“Obfonteri? The hell ya doin' here?”

Kraglin frowned. He scooted his roller-board out a ways, until he could squint into Trexi's face. “I, uh. Work here?”

“You's supposed to be in the hangar bay, shippin' out on a mission! Don't you ever check your comms, boy?”

“I – yeah! There weren't nothin' this mornin', so I figured I was good to start shift!”

Crouched beside the boiler's copper dome and familiarizing herself with the contents of Kraglin's toolkit whenever he called for a new piece, Marigold twisted uneasily. Kraglin couldn't reassure her.

She was a goddamn adult. She didn't need it – or if she did, she was damn well gonna have to wean herself off, and fast.

“Surprise, I guess,” Trexi growled. She hauled him up by the jumpsuit collar, booting the roller deck to one side and dismissing Marigold with a curt nod. She whisked him into the corridor in a quasi-frogmarch. “C'mon, boy. Off ya go. Time to spend some quality time with the cap'n...”

“What?” Kraglin twisted, digging in his heels. His boot treads scraped over the geometrically cut grills that lined the ramps, scaffolds and crisscrossing walkways of the engine block like crazy paving. “No! He's the last a-hole I wanna see -”

“And that,” hissed Trexi in his ear, breath just as moist and nauseating as Kraglin remembered, “is why yer goin'. Have fun, Kraggly-waggly.”

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 Kraggly-waggly did not have fun.

Kraggly-waggly did not have fun, because he lost his footing on the first step down into the hangar: a rickety, spiralling walkway that descended at an angle guaranteed to snap legs, spines, and quite possibly necks if you fell.

He managed to catch himself on the banister. But the smack of his sole against the next rung echoed around the hollow space.

The M-ships primarily operated out of space docks – made for ease of launching. They clustered on the _Eclector's_ sides, little tumorous pustules of individually painted and accented steel, which could slough away like bats swooping from a cave, regroup in formation, and strafe whatever enemy had dared set their sights on the Ravager mothership.

However, maintenance still needed to happen. The majority of workers aboard required some form of oxygenated substance to breathe and a degree of pressure – or a slow rather than explosive drop in atmospheres, at the very least.

And thus: the hangars.

They backed onto the space docks and extended them inwards. Pulley systems and gangways clustered around their dome, a multi-layered network of scaffolding that would have reminded Kraglin of ship rigging, if he'd ever seen such a thing.

As it was, to a Nazghian acclimatized to the dank subterranea of asteroids in the Kradigor belt, everything about this room spoke _death trap._

Especially his cap'n, who was sneering up at him with both hands propped on hips.

“Obfonteri,” he spat, making the name sound like a cuss. “The hell ya doin' here?”

So he hadn't given Kraglin's offer much thought. Kraglin supposed he ought to be grateful Yondu hadn't shoved him in the brig for daring to walk out on him mid-scene. He'd back-talked, and defied orders, and committed every other damn textbook breach of an underling's duty.

But hell, boss had been out of line.

Kraglin wasn't going to apologise for it. Definitely not until he got one in return.

But he also wasn't going to undermine his captain in front of his men.

Kraglin composed his face into the nerviness of a rookie recruit. It wasn't all that hard – Yondu's crest glowed so brightly that it lit the underside of his _Warbird,_ as if she'd been dipped in red wax.

“Trexi told me,” he mumbled, considering his descent at a markedly more sedate pace. “That I'd been assigned to this mission” -

“Like hell ya have!” Only when Yondu unfurled the hologram on his PADD – a densely-packed spreadsheet that was, to Kraglin's vague amusement, color-coded – his expression spoke for itself. “Fuckin' Trexi!”

That was one thing upon which they could agree. Kraglin reached the last stretch of stairs, plodding down with his hands wedged so deep in his pockets they almost tickled his knees.

“Fuckin' Trexi,” he repeated, and caught the whisker-thin sliver of Yondu's grin.

He wasn't stupid. He knew her game. It was entirely self-involved: she just didn't want to be hauled up against no more walls.

But while the more sensible part of Kraglin's brain (the majority, or so he liked to think) insisted this was a shoddy way of going about it, the rest of him was privately fist-pumping and buying Trexi as many rounds as he had credits to spare. She'd shoved him over the edge that his pride and his cowardice held him back from.

“Awright,” growled Yondu, after swallowing his smile. He jerked his fist over his shoulder, a signal that meant _on board,_ judging by the tramp of boots towards the gang ramp.

There were no Ravagers there that Kraglin recognized – just twelve nondescript red coats, topped with faces that weren't especially ugly, attractive, or memorable. The range of body shapes caught his eye though. They were too varied to be stealth operatives or strength-based specialists, but perhaps it was some sort of complex heist that required a mixture...

“Whas the job?”

“Solo,” said Yondu. Kraglin frowned at the men's retreating backs. “Oh, don't mind 'dem. They's just sussin' where in the cargo hold we can put the Confederacy's prezzie.”

“Prezzie?” Kraglin scanned the box Yondu thumped, wider than the pair of them were tall. “The hell's that? Who's it for?”

“Well, y'know that guy I sorta... y'know, accidentally killed?”

“ _Accidentally_ killed?” He knew he was just echoing words, but it was impossible not to – just as it was impossible to resist the urge to hoist one very incredulous eyebrow, as the men jumbled back down the ramp and clapped their hands, taking their places besides the box and spitting on each palm.

“Slip o'the tongue. Y'know how it is.”

Kraglin, who could safely say that he'd never accidentally killed someone, and that all of the deaths for which he was responsible were orchestrated with full intent, didn't. But he nodded along anyway.

“Well, he was one of the shareholders at the Grober Weapons Manufacturin' Corporation. Not like, primary or nothin'. Only owned about twenty percent.”

“Wait-wait-wait.”

Kraglin didn't have much of a jaw, for a Nazghian– he was no rock-gnawing stud. But when it dropped, his mouth formed a perfect o – the same shape as his eyes.

“Ya killed a GWMC board member? Fuck! Cap'n, I used to dig raw materials that went to Grober foundries.”

“An' them factories made the necroblastin' plas canons and Kree warhammers that levelled most of the Xandarian empire at the height of the war. Them same plas canons I used to smuggle across the boarder, around the Nova stockade.” Yondu snorted.

Kraglin didn't ask why Yondu would ferry weapons for his old masters. He settled on a more neutral “Why'd you stop?” propping a thin shoulder on the ship's curved underbelly.

“Cause I killed the contact,” came Yondu's flat reply. He squinted along the gang ramp, into the unlit interior of his _Warbird,_ hollering after the men as they strained and wheezed - “C'mon, look lively! I don't got all day!”

Then, to Kraglin -

“The remains of the shipment we was carryin'. This right here's an important dip-lo-mat-ic mission, or some shit. Gotta make nice with the rest of the family so we can keep hauling their arms, cause I've got a big gig comin' up an' I need us fully locked an' loaded. Capisce?”

Kraglin capisced. And, to his concern, he understood why Trexi had hoodwinked him into accompanying his captain for the ride.

The energy was back. It frizzled through Yondu, fingertip to toes. His grin was near-constant, but also sharp edged, as if it might devolve into a snarl should Kraglin try to poke it.

Kraglin, who valued his fingers, resisted the urge.

“We're on,” said Yondu, once the last of the redcoats had filed out, wringing their blistered hands and exchanging good-natured cusses. Kraglin followed him up the slope, the ridged friction strips gumming to his boots. He did his best to convince himself that it was all gonna be fine.

 

* * *

 

 Spoiler: it wasn't.

There were many things that people thought dogfights were when they'd never been in one. Exciting, for example.

All Kraglin knew was that it was loud and bright, space a muddled minestrone of colors and noise. Every loose plate rang like a gong whenever a plasma bolt plowed into their shield.

“Shit!” Yondu wrenched the controls to one side, not nearly fast enough. The volley strafed their undercarriage. The shield stopped the plasma from burning straight through, but it still packed a mighty punch, riddling their fuselage with pock-marks and dents.

“They're shootin' at us!” Kraglin screamed.

“No shit!”

“Don't they know we got freakin'  _plasma canons_ on board?”

“Just don't  _care,_ so long as they're outta blast range. Shit!”

Sweat trickled down Yondu's neck. Beads formed a damp moustache across his upper lip. He swore and struggled over his control column, yanking the joystick around until the internal gyrosphere made a noise like their spaceship was trying to squeeze between two close-orbiting asteroids. He swore more when that only made the warning beacons flash.  _Stall, stall, stall._

“And,” Kraglin shouted, clinging to his seat with both hands, “ya never thought this'd be a, uh,  _possible outcome_ , when ya  _murdered their friend?_ ”

“Didn't think businessmen  _made_ friends! An' quit shoutin' – this ain't my fault!”

“It kinda is! Killin' people doesn't make you a badass, it just makes people dead – and other people  _fuckin' pissed!_ ”

Yondu's glare snapped to his amid the blizzard of neon-flashing  _danger, danger_  icons, which swarmed their cockpit like a flock of lightning bugs. And the glow of the incoming missile. Couldn't forget about that.

“Didn't hear a  _cap'n_ in there, Obfonteri.”

“Now ain't the time -”

“Do I got the collar on? No! Now's the time!”

“Could we quit arguin' over what I  _call_ ya and concentrate on flyin'?”

“Yeah! When ya call me cap'n!”

“Cap'n.”

“Thas more like it!”

“No.” Kraglin grabbed Yondu's head. He steered him to look at the trajectile, whose eye winked directly in line with his. “ _Cap'n._ ”

“Oh.”

“Oh  _shit._ ”

“Oh  _fuck._ ”

“Oh  _flarknads –_ Left, cap'n! Left!”

The ship cornered tight in zero gravity. Centrifugal force crushed them to their seats, then yanked them in the opposite direction.

It was stomach churning, especially for a man who'd logged less space hours than he'd spent on bathroom breaks. Kraglin suspected he left his intestines far behind him, a slick pink scarf that flapped across the stars.

Yondu glanced at his face in the windscreen.

“Doggy bag's under the seat,” he said grimly, and span them in a loop-the-loop before Kraglin could make good on his advice.

He clapped a hand over his mouth.

Just.

Turned out mystery-stew tasted worse coming up than it did going down.

He swallowed and swallowed, acid searing the back of his throat. He scrunched his eyes shut as the warnings and the read-outs and the holographic displays whirled like matter being siphoned into a singularity.

“I can't take this,” he croaked. “I can't, I can't, I -”

Yondu levelled out. So did the missile. Kraglin cracked an eye, and slammed it shut when he saw how close the red dot had advanced, snapping on the green dot's tail.

“Yondu -”

“Call me cap'n.”

“Is now really the time? Yondu, we're gon die. I'm gonna die because Trexi put me on this stupid fucking mission, and you're gonna die because yer a stars-damned  _dirt-eater_ who can't accept what he fuckin' well needs...“

Yondu didn't take evasive manoueveres, for which Kraglin's digestive system was grateful and the rest of him wasn't.

“I damn well know what I need,” he snarled, gunning the throttles to full. The thrusters throbbed, the engine rattled – rarely a good sound – and the panels around the cockpit glowed from the excess discharged heat. “Yer the one what won't give it to me.”

Kraglin moaned. He clung to the safety harness, his jacket zipper catching the hair on his scrawny chest. “Like I said,  _cap'n_ , if you'd only read the fuckin' book -”

“I did!”

Well, that was surprising. Yondu seemed just as astonished as Kraglin. Then he snapped his eyes back to the GWMC blockade they were nosediving. The ships flipped on their axes to face them, guns bristling along the stockade.

“Oh god,” Kraglin whimpered. Eyelids weren't enough protection. He clapped his hands over his face, hiding between trembling fingers.

The view from the cockpit ballooned. State-of-the-art plasma canons, much like those they had in their hold, exploded to fill the screen. Not literally – thank whatever gods you prayed to. But if they crashed into them at this speed...

Kraglin gulped. At least they'd go fast.

Five kliks to impact. Three. One.

“They're gonna shoot -”

“No they ain't.” Yondu grinned, high on pure adrenaline. Good for him. Kraglin was glad one of them would die happy. “Wanna know why?”

“I want ya to pull up before we slam into them, but I know ya ain't gonna listen...”

“Because,” said Yondu, talking over him, “they'd be caught in the bang, an' I'm a  _fuckin' genius._ Ya can thank me after they've gotten rid of our lil' problem.”

The nearest ship loosed a volley of plasma. It soared towards them, a silent firework-spray. Kraglin wouldn't have know about it were it not for the red wash that shone through his fingers, so bright he could see where each knuckle joined.

For a second, he was convinced that was it. They'd exploded. Everything gone, eradicated in a fireball that burnt and snuffed in a second.

But then he heard Yondu's wily  _yeehaw,_  and the warning wheeze of engines close to burn-out. They barrelled past the Confederation ship who'd called their bluff until the last possible moment, fuselages dragging together with an earsplitting screech.

It was a stroke of serendipity that they didn't depressurize there and then. But M-ship wings contained a generous crumple zone. Kraglin reassured himself with each thump of a self-locking air hatch that their seals were operational.

When he finally dared peel his hands from his eyes, and his lids from them too, he found that their little green dot flew solo.

“We did it,” he breathed. Then, with more exhilaration - “We did it!”

“We showed 'em we ain't afraid to fight fire with fire, alright.” Yondu flicked the comm switch. He toggled through his contact list, glancing between his engine reads and the scrolling display. Kraglin gave his thumb a tentative poke.

“Uh. You focus on flyin, yeah sir?”

Yondu rescinded control with a scowl, but - for once - didn't bitch about it. He wrapped both hands around the steering stick, focusing on the sliver of the jump port through which they'd arrived.

“Who're ya lookin' for?”

“Tullk.”

“Why?”

“Cause I just burnt through all our fuel, an' I don't fancy runnin' out of gas among enemies.”

Just like that, Kraglin's stomach plunged away again. Goodbye, sayonara, lost to the empty black. 

"Yer serious,” he breathed.

“When ain't I?”

Always.

This wasn't good. Their engines strained. Their plating creaked, groaning like un-oiled cybernetics. The warped panelling from where they'd scratched along the Confederation ship wobbled at a high frequency, vibrating fast enough to hum.

“We're gonna make it,” Kraglin said. “We gotta.” He didn't know who he was trying to convince.

Why did he come to space? It sure weren't for this: to die out in the black, blasted to mush by men he'd never done harm nor foul to.

Yondu didn't reply. He just crushed his pedal to the floor and angled the joystick down, pushing them into a steep dive. The jump port gaped like an opening yawn, dilating to swallow them whole.

Plasma bolts sizzled past them. Kraglin checked their shields, and shuddered. If just one of those glittering comet-trails clipped them... That was all it would take. One shot would vaporize their forcefields, and the next would perforate their hull.

Nothing for it but to pray. Kraglin weren't in any god-nobbing fanclub, but he sent up a few whispered pleas, just in case, and ahead of them the jump port grew and grew and  _grew..._

Boom.

Strike one.

They lurched, bucking like they were trying to bounce off a rider.

The shot juddered through their plating.

Alarms blared.

Warnings flashed.

Everything blurred together, a synesthetic blitz that overtaxed each and every one of Kraglin's senses.

Light was sound and sound was light and everything was so  _loud_ and  _bright_ and Kraglin saw the N-stope collapsing before him, the tunnel stoving in, Nazghians crumpled under boulders as they reached for him with their clawed white hands...

Yondu's vehement cussing - “Shit, shit, shit-shit-shit-shit-shit -” was the breaking straw.

Kraglin screamed. At least this way, the last sound he heard wouldn't be his idiot-captain's voice.

The scream lasted, in retrospect, longer than it should have.

Kraglin let it peter out. He cracked his eyelids to find Yondu smacking his consoles, flapping away the smoke.

“I don't think thas gonna work,” he whispered. It felt like he'd swallowed a pack of disposable razor-blades. He rubbed his throat, winced, and started again. “Please tell me we ain't headed back that way.”

The jump portal lit them from behind. The light spilled into the cockpit, ruby and oddly gelatinous. The warning lights snapped off when the bolt hit home, fritzing along with the rest of their power supply. Now they floated, a lonely coracle, surrendered to the tease of gravity from faraway stars.

No visible systems. No visible life. Just a black void stretching away from them in every direction, indefinite and hollow and dead.

Kraglin was no native spacer. He certainly wasn't a philosopher. Considering the sheer, mind-boggling size of the universe was far from his favorite occupation. But he had no choice, not when it rubbed itself all over his eyeballs.

“Where's the  _Eclector?_ ” he whispered.

Yondu gestured at his map relay. It burped a delicate sooty cloud, as if to say,  _why don't you tell me._

“Where are we?”

Another gesture, more adamant than the first. Kraglin sunk on his chair.

“Fuck. What happened?”

That at least, Yondu could answer. “Blast musta fucked with my nav systems just as we passed the event horizon. Won't have gone far off target – no more than three lightyears.”

He even puffed up a little, as if proud to deliver this information. That was all well and good for him. While he was grinning, Kraglin descended into a well of absolute certainty regarding their impending death.

_Three lightyears._

In any direction imaginable, at that. Their demise was less imminent now than it had been with the Confederacy nosecone-to-tail-bumper with Yondu's  _Warbird._ But still, the Q&A section from Kraglin's engineering manual pirouetted through his head, around and around, inescapable as their smoking metal tomb.

_How long does it take for a powerless ship to cool past habitable levels?_

_Two day cycles, as according to the Intersystem Chronological Standard._

_How long does it take for a pair of mammalians with basic lung capacity to use up their air supply?_

_Approximately the same._

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

As there were no working settlements in eyesight, it was doubtful that they were on a trade route. No chance of flagging down any passing ship and throwing themselves at their mercy. The patches on their sleeves and Yondu's rep would see them incarcerated, if that ship was affiliated with any of the galaxy's multitudinous empires. But in Kraglin's opinion, behind bars remained several steps above dead.

Say what you wanted about him though – and oh, Kraglin could think of several choice phrases right about now – Yondu wasn't a quitter.

“Okay,” he said, popping off his belt. Now the power was out, the artifical gravity would dissipate. Kraglin already felt a little lighter on his seat – although that was probably because he left the bulk of his internal organs behind during the chase. “Here's what we do.”

Kraglin listened, diligently, because at the end of the day he was Yondu's crony, not the other way around. And then, because he was also Yondu's sort-of part-time dom – a title that still made pleasure and uncertainty vie in his chest - he told him his honest opinion.

“That's shit.”

Yondu frowned. But, in credit to Kraglin's self-preservation skills and his growing ability to predict his captain's caprice, he didn't whistle. Kraglin told himself it was because Yondu respected what he thought, but knew it was likely more to do with the fact that if he dodged and the glass punctured, they'd both die a helluva lot quicker.

“You got anythin' better, miner-boy? Can't dig yer way outta this one.”

“Don't mean your plan ain't shit. We don't know if that bolt breached. You go open the emergency doors to get to the engines, ya might not come back.”

Yondu shrugged. “Spacemask.”

Kraglin, who had been waiting for this, countered with “Debris,” “Explosive decompression,” and “Grievous head trauma.”

For a man who's only defence was a laugh, Yondu pulled it off with panache.

“Never said ya had to come with,” he chortled, slapping Kraglin on the back. “Stay here an' activate yer spacemask then, ya big wuss. I'll go check out-back.”

He leapfrogged the back of his chair, hanging a second longer in the air than he ought to have done before his boots clashed to the deck. His stride for the hatch was more of a swagger, for the five steps it lasted.

That was the first of the automatically sealing doors, which clammed up tight in direct sheild-strikes in case of an unreported breach.

Yondu spat on both hands, squatting in position over the manual release wheel. He shot a quick grin at Kraglin, teeth glinting orange from the shadows.

“Ya might wanna plug yerself in.”

Kraglin tugged demonstratively on his belts. He held his breath when Yondu started grunting and heaving at the lock, expecting at any moment for the panel to buckle, then crumple, and his captain's wide eyes to meet his for a second before he was slurped out into the void.

“Activate yer spacemask at least,” he said, leading by example.

Yondu showed a sweaty middle finger. But he did as Kraglin told him before he got back to work, and Kraglin had to dig his nails into his thigh to stop any errant  _good boys_ slipping through.

Yondu didn't deserve them. Not after this stunt. Anyway, if Kraglin turned him on, all that wonderful blue muscle, which clenched and flexed as Yondu worked the wheel in tight, rhythmic circles, would be useless.

Kraglin swallowed. He watched Yondu's reflection in the mirrored glass as surreptitiously as he could. Y'know. Just in case he noticed the hatch cracking before Yondu did, and had a chance to holler. That was totally his only reasoning.

Yondu discarded his coat to work. The spacemask hid his face, for which Kraglin was in equal parts glad and disappointed – glad because like it or not, he'd developed a soft spot for the guy and it'd be a shame to see those sharp features lax with death; disappointed because the miners had always joked that the face you pulled when you exerted yourself was the same one that graced your mug when you came.

When the hermetic seal broke, it was with a highly anticlimactic puff. Yondu clapped oxidized iron flakes from his hands. His palms were a brighter blue than usual, the skin soft from a lack of manual labor.

Should Kraglin offer to help? His hewer's callouses could withstand a little more grief, and it would stop him sitting here alone and fretting about what he'd do if, after the next seal was unclasped, he spotted Yondu's body floating outside the window...

“Three more before I reach the engine rooms,” Yondu informed him, entirely too chipper.

He scratched at the sweat circles under his armpits, the cock of his head telling Kraglin he was grinning. Then, with a jaunty little wave, he hopped into the hole, propping his boots on either side of the ladder so he free-fell into the dark.

Ideally, he'd shut the hatch behind him so that Kraglin wouldn't run the risk of being clobbered to death by anything not welded down.

But in all honesty, Kraglin didn't want him out of earshot.

“You okay?” he yelled, hating the wobble in his voice. Everything about this situation was tense, from the shoddiness of Yondu's plan – pry a battery from the charging plinth, cobble an emergency beacon, pray the  _Eclector_ came into broadcasting range – to his concern about Yondu navigating through the pitch-black hold. He wasn't designed for this, stars-dammit. Kraglin should've been the one to go, with his souped-up night vision and his miner's confidence in small dark spaces...

 _Fweeee,_  went the second seal, releasing another blast of air into the cockpit. It tasted fresh, although Kraglin knew that wouldn't last.

“Ain't no breach here neither,” called Yondu, somewhat unnecessarily.

Kraglin tracked him by his footsteps, hearing him stomp towards the next door and wincing in preparation for when he stubbed his toe on the table.

It happened a beat later than he expected – his mental mapping of the  _Warbird's_ interior must be off. But Kraglin allowed himself a harried little smile at Yondu's swearing – dimming in volume and color as he remembered Kraglin was listening and that he was trying very hard to be cool.

“Don't get cocky,” was all Kraglin said, eyes on the translucent wobble of the portal behind them. They'd locked the co-ordinates so that the pursuing ships couldn't follow them – that, or the Confederacy felt they'd made enough of an impression with that last shot, and didn't want to waste fuel on a chase.

Yondu laughed. It was raspy and warm, and ignited a similar sensation in Kraglin's stomach. “Me? Never.”

He span the wheel of the final hatch – the only one that'd been greased in the past century.

He managed a vehement “fuck” before he was dragged through.

After that, everything happened very quickly.

It was as if someone had attached a vacuum nozzle to the hatch. Which, Kraglin supposed, on a rudimentary level, was pretty damn accurate.

His hair wrenched at his scalp. His back stuck to his chair, belts slack on his front. He clung to them on the offchance he was thin enough to slip out.

“Yondu!” he screamed, but the roar of their rapidly diminishing air supply drowned him out. “Yondu! Fuck!”

Slam. Clunk. Silence.

Then, croaky and small - “Think there's a breach.”

Kraglin, hanging limp in his belts, face a bleached white, tried to convince his body that it remembered how to breathe. Their oxygen content, already low, had dropped further still. Kraglin battled his lungs into submission through willpower, ordering them to slow the fuck down.

“What plugged the gap?” he asked, once sure he can talk without his voice cracking. He didn't quite manage.

“Door blew shut,” Yondu answered. “Thank flark the shot didn't clip none of the canons.” Below, Kraglin could hear him struggling to his feet, keeping his moans quiet. Like that was ever a good sign.

“Uh. Cap'n?”

“Sup?”

“You injured?”

A pause. Too long of one, in Kraglin's opinion.

“Not badly,” Yondu said. Then, before Kraglin could get uppity and demand to know what that meant – “I'm closin' the last door up again. Make an airlock. I gotta get that battery, Krags.”

 _Krags._ Perfect time to be assigned a nickname. Still, better than  _Kraggly-waggly,_ he supposed. Kraglin unpopped his belts, growling to himself and shaking his head. “No, no – sir! It's too dangerous, don'tchu fuckin' -”

Another clunk, less violent than the first, but far more final.

Yondu didn't even bother to say goodbye.

That was pragmatism on his part – any further delay would've given Kraglin the chance to vault his chair, jump down the ladder shaft and tackle Yondu facefirst into the ground.

Kraglin turned in a slow circle. He couldn't tell if the hairs on the back of his neck were standing up of their own accord, or whether it was the lessening gravity.

Calling out to Yondu was useless. No air could pass through the thick, submarine-style lock on the door, and no sound either.

There was no way for Kraglin to tell if the other door had been left open or shut. Whether the pressure was atmospheric or below. Whether Yondu was dead or alive.

Kraglin's nails dug into his palms. How long did he wait, he wondered? How long did he linger here in the darkness, eyes drawn to the speckles of blood that floated around the closed breach-door?

Three minutes was the answer – or three sets of twenty even breaths, timed to last three seconds on the inhale and three on the out.

Cave-collapse training kicked in. Kraglin knew the dangers of hyperventilation. That would only sap their air supply faster. When he finally couldn't take it any more, he pressed on his wrist to make sure the spacemask's full-body forcefield was active, clenched his fists, and marched to the door.

Just as somebody banged on the other side.

No point scaring himself with ghost stories. Kraglin pulled open their airlock to find Yondu bent double with a battery tucked under one arm, the other cradling a fresh gash that ran the length of his oblique.

Kraglin could barely see it. They'd moved under the  _Warbird's_ hull, away from her glass cockpit. The glow from the portal wasn't enough to illuminate them, or the scrape that was giving Yondu grief.

Kraglin didn't sigh, but only because he didn't want to waste oxygen. He did walk over to Yondu though – walk, not sprint; sprinting burned air double-time – and peeled his torso upright.

The battery gave off a faint gleam, like the radioactive rocks Kraglin remembered chipping from an asteroid back in Skrull territory: green as foxfire and tingly to the touch. He used it as a torch, sweeping it over Yondu's side and swearing quietly to himself when he couldn't make out the parameters of the wound.

“I'm gonna need ya to take yer shirt off, sir.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while. Sorry - real life kicks my ass on a regular basis. Thank you to everyone who comments or leaves kudos.


	8. Hard Times

Yondu snorted, which was expected, and mumbled something about Kraglin trying to make free and easy with his body. But he slumped gradually to sit, and when Kraglin rested the battery on his lap and stalked off to rummage through the cabinets in search of gauze, he clutched the chunky cylinder to him, running his hands over the twisted metal impact case that insulated the plasma-shaft inside.

Kraglin recognized the motion for what it was – a distraction.

“Shirt,” he reminded him, emptying one drawer after another, working his way around the small room. Capsules poked off at angles, all currently barred by an airlock. Kraglin didn't dare test any of them, not with Yondu in an already shoddy state. “Do you even have medical supplies, sir?”

_Or are you so far up your own ass that you actually think you're immortal?_

Yondu scowled at him – Kraglin could tell thanks to the ghoulish underlighting from the battery. He demonstratively tugged the fabric up his belly.

He'd discarded his coat outside of the airlock, Kraglin saw. He was glad it hadn't been lost. Depending on how long it took them to piece together a working emergency beacon, the pair of them might be snuggling up under that thing sooner rather than later.

It meant that they only had one layer to work with. Kraglin had to swallow several times before continuing his search.

He eventually located a bundle of what were either bandages or streamers for when Yondu wanted to host parties. He turned to find his cap'n facing away, engrossed in wriggling to freedom. He seemed to be having trouble – the cut stung too much for him to lift his arms over his head.

Only the shirt was being removed. But that didn't matter to Kraglin.

A visible strip of skin gleamed between Yondu's leathers. Kraglin’s mind expanded the picture. He imagined pushing the shirt over Yondu’s pecs, unbuckling the belt, slipping the pants down to find that lovely thick cock.

“Here,” he said, coughing to clear the jolty octave-hitch from his voice. Like a freakin' prepubescent boy. “Let me help.”

The rise and fall of Yondu's ribcage stalled when Kraglin set the bandage reel to one side and slid his cool palms over the scarred meat of Yondu's back. The twitches ceased when Kraglin placed both hands flat against the skin, soaking in his heat.

Yondu ran a little warmer, Kraglin a little cooler. Kraglin's mind instantly twitched to how Yondu would feel inside him. Cock like an engine rod, warming from the inside. Or better yet: around him. A tight furnace blaze, slickened to soft wet silk by the twist of Kraglin's dick...

His codpiece was conspicuously damp. Again.

Kraglin bit his lip, eyes fluttering shut as he dug in the heels of his hands. He had to press to feel Yondu's bones through the muscle. Then they were like a reward: diamond under warm plasticine. They felt unbreakable.

If only the rest of Yondu was quite so sturdy. He flinched again when Kraglin shuffled closer, sitting with a leg to either side of Yondu's hips, chest against that smooth blue back. The shirt must be biting under his armpits. Kraglin hooked his chin over Yondu's shoulder. He peered down Yondu's torso, hissing when he saw where the shirt stuck to the wound. It was stained: a spreading dark circle.

“Shit! Sir, why didn'tcha say somethin' -”

“S'rry,” Yondu slurred. He dropped his head back on Kraglin's shoulder, dozy and limp as an infant. Hell. Kraglin had to patch Yondu up, best he could. He could worry about batteries for the transmitter later.

But when his shaking hands peeled the leather up – the situation was urgent enough that he resisted the urge to pinch his little blue nipples – he found that the wound was no way near as deep as he feared. No innards glistened in the gap. He angled the battery close, just in case, but the green light picked out a graze and a big blob of bruising, the size of Kraglin's outsplayed hand, where a blunt edge had caught Yondu's side and scraped mercilessly along.

This time, he didn't swallow his relieved sigh. But this did beg the question of why Yondu was so pliant, letting himself be moved, barely twitching as Kraglin ran his fingertips around the edge of the puffy skin to map the size of it. Unless...

Kraglin peered down Yondu’s body, then a little further to his lap. Ah.

“Yondu,” he said, striving for professionality and falling a lightyear short. “I'm gonna, uh. Deal with this for ya.”

Yondu's purr of happiness, and the enticing wriggle of his hips that followed, cock swelling as Kraglin watched, indicated that he misunderstood. Kraglin amended himself -

“To the  _wound,_ sir. Remember – we agreed. We're not doin' nothin' with the collar no more.”

Not until Yondu caved and read the manual. Or more than read it –  _learned_ from it. That would never happen. Subby tendencies or otherwise, the man was a living incarnation of pride.

“What d'you need so many plasma canons for?” he asked, voice pitched just above a whisper as he unwound the reel, tacking the tatty end of the bandage to Yondu's little beergut. The muscle was solid, not toned to a brittle six-pack but  _beefy,_ like Yondu could laugh off a fist to the belly. There was a funny line stretching just under the bunched creases of the jacket. An old scar, perhaps? It was too dark to make out details.

His business-talk made a fine job of killing the mood. Kraglin tried to convince himself he was grateful.

“You ain't Bridge,” Yondu grumbled, glaring at the far wall. “You don't gotta know.”

“True. But I am somethin', right?” Kraglin pressed the self-adhesive strip to the wound's far side. It would unpeel gently as the graze healed, the glue dissolving harmlessly on contact with collagen. It'd be better with medi-glue of course, which grafted new flesh from stem cells suspended in the liquid. But at the very least, you didn't have to worry about taping the gauze, or, in this poor lighting, accidentally sticking a gummy part to broken skin.

Yondu still twitched. Not quite a wince, far from a flinch, but a  _twitch:_ a tiny jerk of muscles that spread out from where Kraglin touched, his only reaction to the pain. Kraglin quickly dropped his hands, holding the bandage reel in the left and circling the right over Yondu's hip, where it jutted from his low-slung belt, soft stomach ceding to bone.

Yondu pushed into the touch, then back again against Kraglin. He settled with a quiet rumble, throaty and leonine-low, that Kraglin would be hearing next time he jerked off. “Yeah, kid. You’re somethin' alright.”

Kraglin did his best to concentrate. He tore gauze strips off with his teeth, each raise of the reel to his mouth making his forearm cross Yondu's chest in a loose embrace.

That chest was moving unsteadily, but not with pain.

“Slow yer breathin', sir.” He hooked his chin over Yondu's shoulder to apply the strip: overlapping a fraction with the previous. “Ain't got much air left.”

“I don't get ya, Krags. Thas all.”

“We should probably stop talkin' too...”

“All I'm tryin' to say is...” Yondu shifted in place, making Kraglin horribly aware that there was only leather and his cock-cup between them.

“Huh?” His fingers shook as they smoothed the bandage down, raising the reel to his lips for another chew. It was a rhythm, of sorts: stick, tear, apply, repeat. Kept him from thinking about the warm curves of the body in front of him, the little arch in Yondu's back that seemed designed to rub his ass all over his crotch. “Whassat?”

“You say ya don't wanna mess around with me. But then...”

Yondu rolled his hips, this time with undeniable purpose. Kraglin did his best not to choke. What a waste of precious oxygen that would be.

Yondu didn’t meet his gaze, still sneering at the cockpit. The portal reached out to them with vermillion fingers; they refracted through the glass, bending into the lightless M-ship. Between that and the battery, propped on its tail end close enough that static crackled between the hairs on Kraglin's arm, there was enough light to pick out the tension in his captain’s jaw.

“I jus' don't get what you want from me,” he said. “If it's power, or money or whatever, you'd've fucked me when I told you too.  _This?_ I don't understand.”

 _This_ didn't refer to the gentle spread of gauze over his belly.  _This_ meant the fact that both of them were still clothed. And not just because sex was one exertion they really couldn't afford.

Kraglin gulped. He could tell Yondu what he let Trexi believe – that he was in this for the sake of the crew and his own self-interest. Any positive benefits on the captain were a by-product.

Or he could tell Yondu the truth. That he'd been aching for him since he stood amid the carcasses of a hundred Kree dogfighters, floodlights bouncing off the metal in his smirk. Possibly even before – he just hadn't known it yet.

“Read the manual,” he said.

“I  _did!_ ”

“Again. Properly. Maybe you'll find out.”

“Hell,” Yondu grumbled, smacking at Kraglin’s skinny thigh. “I ain’t interested in you for yer taste in literature.“

“Right. You’re interested in me ‘cause you wanna fuck someone who respects you, but who won’t take your shit. ‘Cause you wanna be taken apart by someone you trust.”

Stupid, stupid, _stupid._ A part of Kraglin’s brain was shouting very loudly right now about how this was a terrible idea and he should’ve known better. But darkness was a potent drug, and between the shadows around him, the feel of Yondu caught in his arms, and the heat of sour breath on his beard, Kraglin’s self-control was rapidly dissolving.

To make matters worse, Yondu didn't struggle. He sensed that he'd gone from being stabilized by Kraglin's arms to trapped in them: ropes of white sinew and overlaid leather that bound them together. He  _melted,_ muscle sagging loose, trusting Kraglin to catch him.

The only parts that were anything other than relaxed were his hands; those curled around Kraglin's wrist, making the incarceration mutual. His dick filled fully, the leather sloping back towards his belt, and he hitched up real pretty, chasing the friction.

_Damn._

Kraglin licked his lips. He imagined peeling that zipper back, burying his face between thick blue thighs. Drinking him down: the stench of unwashed dick and less-washed leather, the rich musky taste, all the way until his lips stretched snug around him and Yondu had no more to give.

Nazghians couldn’t enjoy blowjobs – not without their partner running a serious risk of asphyxiation. Kraglin had never received one, nor given one neither. But hell, if he didn’t want to get on his knees right now, suck him soft and slow, make his captain  _quiver…_

Gravity fluxed. Their asses left the floor, hovering a full second before drifting back down.

The bob of weightlessness disrupted Kraglin's thought processes, which had been slinking ever-deeper into want. He retook his mental reins, wringing them in a white-knuckle grip.

He couldn’t let this overtake him. This was about control, after all – not just of Yondu but of himself.

And they were on a timer. How much air gushed out when Yondu opened the breach? They might have one day’s worth left, at most. If Kraglin wanted to do this again – and again, and again, and  _again_  – he had to call a halt.

Hopefully this time, Yondu would listen.

Kraglin sighed. He stroked the edge of the last strip, still gummy with his spit.

Yondu arched forwards as if the pain had crossed wires with pleasure, forcing Kraglin's fingertips to dig into his raw side. When Kraglin unwound from around him and reached for the battery, he heard the tiny whine.

God, he was gagging for it. Like a cyborg whore, cunnie always dripping, ready for a fuck…

But that veered too close to the secret that Yondu so unthinkingly spilled over the booze Kraglin spilled on his mattress. Much like that booze, that secret might evaporate, never spoken of again, but nothing would rid the sheets of the ethanol-stink.

_Trained up from young, y'know._

The bright coil unwound in Kraglin’s belly. He patted their battery, unable to look his captain in the eyes. “Gonna fix this,” he mumbled. “Won't be a mo.”

He pushed back, away from Yondu, using the low gravity to his advantage as he bounced to his feet. Yondu didn't bark for him to turn back. There was no holler for Kraglin to unzip, lay flat, and let the captain ride him dry.

When Kraglin risked peering behind him, halfway up the cockpit ladder, he found Yondu’s face gobbled by shadows, too dark to make out the expression. But his eyes were shut, and his fist was trembling against his thigh, while his other hand kept the pressure on his wound like he was trying to rekindle Kraglin’s heat.

 

* * *

 

 

 

The slow, uneven blink of the lights reminded Kraglin of a dying man's pulse. The darkness, the oppressive weight in the air, the sense that while his lungs were filling, they were drawing less and less breath... It was all so achingly familiar.

Yondu had clambered up to join him a while back. He perched on his chair with his coat draped around his shoulders, having lost his battle to stave off the shivers.

“How ya doin'?” he asked, breath making white puffs that dissipated quick as radon gas in the low-mines.

The answer was _better than you._ Nazghians were adaptable; it was practically what they'd been designed for. No sense having workers who keeled over halfway through their twelve hour shift because the air got a bit nippy.

But while Kraglin didn't feel the cold as he sat in the darkness and awaited suffocation, his memory found other ways to torment him.

He remembered it all: the rocks falling, the echoes reverberating until the noise reached a constant pitch that juddered him up and down in his boots, so loud that it drowned out the screams. The choking dust that settled over fallen men, dead and dying alike. The staling air. The knowledge that this, all of it, was Kraglin's fault.

There was a reason Kraglin hadn't been well-liked. The N-stope collapse shaped his life in the same way that it had shaped those caught under its rubble: smudged to flat puddles of gristle and pulverized bone, crushed around the contours of a bolder.

Kraglin had run, leaving his jackhammer jabbering away behind him. He made it out. And while he forgave himself, because regrets were pointless unless you possessed an Infinity Stone and the ability to _do_ something about them, his fellow miners hadn't.

Hell, Mamet was the only Nazghian who'd said a kind word to him since they arrived. Pretty much the only one who spoke to him beforehand too, even if it was to beg Kraglin to give him back his hurrying hat, which Kraglin had dangled over the chute on the crook of a single finger.

Perhaps that was why Kraglin'd been so furious when he promoted himself out of the pits. Mamet left him behind, to face those he'd wronged, those who lost friends and comrades when a rebellious little new-Hewer brought down the ceiling on his first ever punishment duty.

Yondu shuffled to the edge of his chair. He drew his knees to his torso, hugging them as he bundled the coat around himself. He folded the flaps one over the other and tucked in the trailing end. The resultant mobius strip of leather swaddled his hunched body, staving off the cold.

“Krags. You alright?”

Kraglin forced a smile. It felt feeble on his face, like a cracked M-ship headlamp valiantly trying to spark. “Fine, sir. You?”

“Bit nippy.”

Kraglin's smile became a tad more genuine. Then a touch more so, as he caught Yondu peeping at him from the corner of his eye. “Wanna snuggle?” he asked, so his cap'n didn't have to.

He grinned at the surly “Well, only if _you_ wanna,” that followed.

 

* * *

 

 

The battery flickered away, spliced into their radio. Its green light clashed with the red of the portal, an intermittent sheen as it broadcast the same three tapped-out concepts in Intergalacic Morse: _help, two alive,_ and, at Yondu's insistence, _no injuries._

It coated the two bodies, pressed together under the stinking overcoat. Those two bodies were, by now, as the twentieth hour rolled around, crusted with ice-flowers: six-pointed stars that had spread indiscriminately over skin, glass and leather. Their faces were flushed at the cheeks and nose, the rest having paled to corpse-like gray.

Kraglin shifted, doing his best not to rub Yondu's bandage as he tried to rotate a little life into his hip-joint. Yondu jolted nevertheless, a grunt gathering gravel in his throat before he expelled it in a puff of white mist. It broke on Kraglin's face, warm and meaty, and he blew back, making his captain's nose twitch.

“Pins and needles,” he said, by way of explanation. Yondu huffed. Finally, after Kraglin refused to let himself be crushed into submission, Yondu magnanimously budged his ass to one side.

The chair wasn't the most spacious. Yondu sat across him side-saddle, back flush to the arm while his legs kicked over the opposite one. His left knee pressed on Kraglin's chest, a point of warmth in the humid space beneath the coat, their own bodyheat gathering and reflecting back upon themselves.

The cold wouldn't kill them before the carbon dioxide would – but Yondu was sluggish already. Kraglin tucked his chin, wriggling further under the makeshift cover. He pulled his legs in – which, being deemed too long to fit, had been bared from the shin down. When he dragged his palms over them they came away slicked with ice-crust, meltwater trickling down the zip-seam on his boots.

Yondu made the mistake of brushing them too. He pulled a face, magnificent in an ugly sort of way, and gave Kraglin a shove. It knocked him sideways, icy air stabbing at the space between them.

Yondu squeaked. Kraglin yelped. They latched onto each other, gripping biceps and wrists, and yanked themselves close once more.

By the time the next M-ship plowed through the portal and into their aft, they were cuddled in toasty free-float, the fluctuation of their gravity generators making the coat swirl around them. As neither of them were plugged in, they were promptly tossed over the console.

“Ow,” said Kraglin, eloquent as ever.

He rubbed his head, where a lump was forming, and opened his eyes – only to flinch back as headlamps blazed around them, surrounding the _Warbird_ in a blinding corona. He didn't have enough air to scream properly, which was good because he was trying to make a good impression. “Fuck, that's bright.”

Yondu wriggled forwards, bending over the console. His coat slid off his shoulders and hung in the air behind him. He was too excited to notice, swivelling to straddle Kraglin and craning around the curve of the M-ship's cockpit in the hopes of seeing the vessel that had dodgemed the _Warbird's_ backside.

“That's _rescue!_ ”

Kraglin managed to work his gulp around the lump in his throat, hands fluttering to settle on Yondu's waist. The coat crumpled between them, a concertina of dusky red. When Kraglin shuffled – as much as he could, under Yondu's weight – the leather shifted with him, reflecting a greasy sheen of headlamps as the other ship manouevered around their bulk.

Very, very bright headlamps.

“Shit." Kraglin balled his fists into his eye sockets.

It took a long time to adjust, even with Yondu parked over him, blanketing him in his shadow. Once Kraglin's pupils shrunk enough to let him crack his lids and not feel like there were corkscrews twisting against his optic nerve, he squinted at their saviour.

He couldn't make out anything other than basic shapes, their edges blurred together by the glare. Yondu was barely discernible: a dark chip against the white, red glinting on the top of his head .

“It's Tullk!”

Kraglin would have to take his word for it. He wriggled with renewed frenzy.

Yondu, rolling into the bucks with the ease of a bilgesnipe-matador, frowned down at him from on high. “What's gotchu so upset, Kraggles?”

“Are ya kiddin'? You're sat on me! You want him to see this?”

“What, that we're cuddlin' fer warmth?” Yondu demonstratively pulled the coat over his knees. “S'pragmatic, that.”

Kraglin highly doubted Tullk would see it that way.

“No,” he said. “Get off me, Yondu.”

Not sir. Not boss. Not even Udonta.

Yondu tipped his head to one side, frown twisting crinkles into his cheeks. Kraglin didn't repeat himself. Just looked straight at him, ignoring the instinctive flinch as focusing made his pupils dovetail.

This was on Yondu. Either he would listen, meaning that they still had a chance to salvage this _whatever it was_.

Or he wouldn't.

Yondu met his watery glare. He was close enough to smell, rancid sweat and radiation. Somehow, it was sharper than ever in the cold.

Tullk, having swung around to the _Warbird's_ nearest airlock, punched in the sequence that would magnetize their doors together. He fed power through the conductive copper plates that ringed the seal.

That defibrilating pulse that would boost the _Warbird's_ engines enough to get them cycling on empty. The breach in the third compartment meant that any extra air Tullk pushed through was gonna be sucked straight back out again – but at least with radio, they could warn him of the danger.

And it should stop him marching in to tear Kraglin away from their captain and pin him to a wall by the throat. Again.

But Tullk's next moves weren't as immediately concerning to Kraglin as Yondu's, who had yet to make a decision on whether or not _no_ meant _no_.

Really, Kraglin knew, he'd left it too long. The manual had been very particular about red flags, and Yondu bristled with more than a semaphore class.

He considered issuing his ultimatum again, although it kinda ruined the purpose of giving Yondu the choice. Before he could squeeze out the words though, Yondu shuffled off him, shivering as he unstuck from Kraglin's lap and let frosty air take his place. His pants were stiff from the chill, creaking as they bent behind his knees.

Huh. Kraglin opened his mouth.

“Don't,” said Yondu.

Their lights fluttered on. They were uncertain at first, a flicker that dwindled to black, before reasserting themselves with more conviction. Yondu glanced at Kraglin over his shoulder.

“Don't'chu fuckin' say it.”

“Say what -”

A hand plastered over his mouth. “ _Anythin'._ ”

Kraglin considered, and nodded. Hey. Limited oxygen, after all.

 

* * *

 

 

The breach, as it turned out, wasn't huge; the jagged diagonal slice had been caused more by the scrape through the portal after the shields fritzed than the plasma shot beforehand.

Tullk had to solder a panel across it before he could open the next blastdoor, but Kraglin and Yondu weren't complaining. It gave them a little more time to compose themselves, before the inevitable.

The power boost meant the oxygenerators were ticking over again – feebly, just enough to introduce a delicate stir into the stale fug of exhalation. Nevertheless, Kraglin heaved a sigh of relief when the blast door opened and fresh air gushed in, tasting sweet to lungs that had been stewing in their own output.

The fresh air was followed by Tullk. That was less reassuring. But Yondu stood between them, so Kraglin tried not to flinch too visibly.

Tullk stomped directly to his captain. He barely acknowledged Kraglin, but the glare he sent his way was a pretty clear indication of  _I'll deal with you later._

Kraglin swallowed, tugging his zipper down until his throat had room to bob. The oxygen content might be heightening, so fast he felt dizzy from the sudden saturation, but he still had the distinct sense of being strangled.

“Cap'n,” said Tullk gruffly, holding Yondu by the shoulder guards while he swept him for injuries. He ignored Yondu's attempts to shove him off, which was telling, and Yondu neither fought too hard nor summoned the arrow, which was even more so.

Kraglin, rubbing frost from his moustache, watched them out of the corner of his eye. He saw the way Tullk turned Yondu's face into the light, staring intently at him, from the reticulated scars over his left temple to the defiant, borderline sulky, jut of his chin. He saw how Yondu's fists curled in Tullk's loose sleeves, gathering the leather in squeaking bundles.

And he wondered, not for the first time,  _why me._

Then he thought of Tullk's disgusted reaction to the collar. Of his threats and posturing. Of that warning, issued in a hissed undertone in a storage vault surrounded by cobwebs and out-of-date protein packs.

Tullk didn't know. If he did, Kraglin doubted he'd still be capable of walking to the airlock, let alone hurling himself out of it. But Yondu also couldn't tell him, as much as he might want to, because...

_Tullk wouldn't get it._

Perhaps Kraglin understood what he meant now. If Yondu risked telling his first mate, he risked everything.

It hurt, Kraglin realized. Being second-choice, it  _hurt._

It was an odd sort of ache, one that centered on the chest like a blaze of heartburn, igniting pain sensors for no discernable cause. His companions didn't notice. Yondu was too busy mock-slapping Tullk as he attempted to lift his shirt, searching for the source of that dark daub on his shirt.

The ache stabbed, sharp and penetrating. Kraglin cornered it and forced himself to look at it critically.

Why was he getting so pissy? Sure, he'd never meant anything more to nobody other than a quick fling, some rough and tumble behind a rocky outcrop, a mouth to suck and a cock to ride. Why should this be any different?

“Oi!” A fingersnap registered, right besides his ear. Kraglin lurched, almost cracking his skull on the  _Warbird's_ low-slung ceiling.

“Huh?”

“I'm talkin' 'bout you, idjit. Complimentin' you, actually. Least you could do's look grateful.”

“ _Huh?_ ”

Yondu rolled his eyes, one hand clamped over his graze to stop Tullk poking. “I  _said,_ you was the one what bandaged me up. Did a right neat job of it too.”

Tullk glared at Kraglin, but it was a little less tight-lipped than usual. “I'll be the judge of that. There's more medical gauze back on my ship. Now c'mon, both of you – it's gonna take a while for your 'bird to heat up again, so you might as well stay on mine until yer tanks are full enough to make it back to the  _Eclector._ ”

“Back home,” Yondu agreed. When he set off, limping for the hatch, Kraglin shrugged at Tullk and trotted after him.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

After that, Kraglin could be forgiven for thinking that he never wanted to work another job with the captain again. But before he knew it, the end of the week-cycle was whirling around, as cycles tended to do, and the date of their next allotted session approached faster than the missile that had catapulted them to that lonely little system in the outer rim.

Kraglin, far from the first time in his experience as a juvenile space-pirate, had no clue what he was supposed to do.

There was no rubric for this, no precedent. He'd given Yondu an ultimatum –  _read the manual and follow it, or find someone else to play my part._ But how much quality reading time did Yondu slot in around running a full ship, whistling through his enemies, housing their new shiny plasma canons, and rearing a Terran?

And, of course, there were those frantic whispered conversations he seemed to be holding with each and every member of his Bridge crew. He wasn't especially subtle about it – but then again, Kraglin thought with an internal wave of embarrassment, no other Ravager spent as much time looking at their captain as him. The rest of 'em were too busy staying alive to notice.

At least, that was the theory.

Mamet had taken to hunting Kraglin out in mess hall after he'd worked his way through half a bowl and claiming a seat close besides, so that Kraglin would have to gobble fast enough to give himself hiccups if he wanted to be free of his company. He leaned over his bony knees.

“What's captain up to, huh?”

Kraglin tore his gaze from where Yondu was gesticulating at Trexi with his soup-smeared spoon, green juice peppering her face. “Flark knows. Ain't none of my business; sure ain't yours.”

“Huh. You took that solo with him last cycle, didn't ya? Hasn't taken any other Rookie out for a spin.” Mamet shuffled his chair in. Kraglin resisted the urge to slide along the bench in the opposite direction. The squeak of the rubber-tipped chairlegs made his jaw clamp. “So, what I wanna know is – business or pleasure?”

Kraglin was glad he didn't have his mouth full in that moment, because he'd only have choked on it.

“Wh-what?"

Mamet shrugged. "Just curious."

Bullshit. Kraglin swallowed his next mouthful, chewing slow until the shock dissipated. He studied Mamet the whole time - the pasty complexion, the sweaty, scrawny neck.

"Did Taserface put you up to this?” he asked.

Mamet snivelled a denial, but Kraglin wasn't looking at him. Twisting at the waist, he cast his gaze around the hall, hunting for that greasy beehive. Taserface wasn't exactly a blend-in-the-background character. He also wasn't quite as stupid as he pretended – almost, but not  _quite._ Enough to exaggerate his act when it suited him.

It took Kraglin precious seconds to locate him. He sat in the gloom under a vent-pipe that funnelled kitchen fumes towards the hull. His big form was crushed into an armchair – part of their higgledy piggledy mismatched mishmash of furniture, donated by every cruise ship they robbed along the way. He was staring directly at him.

That answered that. Kraglin turned back to his meal.

“Go away,” he said to Mamet, who picked morosely at his own portion, aware that the game was up. “I don't talk to spies.”

Mamet jiggled his scrawny legs. “Taserface says it'd be worth it,” he said, gnawing at the inside of his lip. “Says you'll get paid good.”

“For taking out Yondu?” Kraglin snorted. “That ain't gonna happen.”

Mamet’s eyes bugged. “You called him 'Yondu',” he whispered. “Not Captain Udonta.”

“So?” Kraglin’s hand tensed around his spoon. He wasn't above shoving it up Mamet’s nose, and he was more than willing to prove as much if Mamet kept talking.

“So,” said Mamet, swallowing the lump in his throat, “you'd better convince me right now that he don't give a shit about you, even if you like him.”

“Shuddit. I don't  _like_ him."

Mamet shot him a particularly pitying expression that Kraglin longed to bite off his face. “Work something out, Kraglin. A public thing. If Taserface notices you get treated better than the rest of us suckers, others'll notice too.”

Tullk. Trexi. Kraglin had rocked an awful lot of boats by getting himself in the captain's good books. If he kept on like this, there was no doubt about it – the only way he was gonna wind up was dead.

Kraglin dug a finger into his neckhole, prying it from the clammy skin. “Why'd you help me,” he croaked.

Mamet looked at him like he was the imbecile here. “Because we're  _friends,_ obviously.”

And he sat there, a twee smile crimping his lips, waiting for praise. Affirmation. Possibly both. Kraglin groaned and, as Mamet had left his bowl uncovered, reached over the table and stole a dumpling.

“Thank you,” he said, because he wasn't an utter a-hole. Then he stood with a leisurely ball-scratch, aiming his empty dish at the wash-chutes on the far wall.

As for Yondu? Well, Kraglin had a comm. He wasn't going to act needy – he'd told Yondu that he only intended on continuing this if his demands were met and being the one to go banging on his boss's door would ruin that.

No. He'd let the captain come to him.

After that? Who knew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been so long.


	9. All Deserve To Die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This has been painfully slow in coming. I can only apologize. Real life is busy, but I've reworked the last chapters of this fic somewhat and gotten it into a state I'm a bit happier with. If anyone is still following this fic, I truly hope that you enjoy this chapter.

Kraglin lived his life as normal.

He pretended to be conked out in his cot while Half-nut scrambled past, and allotted a generous fifteen minutes of the morning pre-shift hour to Taserface and his cronies as they went about their usual bathroom business.

He ignored Mamet where he could and grudgingly indulged him with monosyllables where he couldn't.

He did his best to present a concerned face to Marigold when he saw her, but stopped when she told him flat-out that it made him look like he needed more fiber in his diet.

And, of course, he thought of Yondu.

He thought of the leg-numbing weight of him on his lap. He thought of patching the wound beneath his leathers – which would, by now (assuming Centaurians followed the same healing schedule as the Nazghian race) be scabby and sore, puffed to the touch. He thought of Yondu trying to suck his cock through the front of his pants, clinging to his legs like a snare. He thought of the manual, and of Yondu's _“I am readin' it”,_ and of the sliver of possibility that one day soon, they might wake up on opposite sides of the same bed.

But most of all, he thought of resting his boots on Yondu's back. Having him crawl up close and nuzzle his stubbled cheek against Kraglin's thigh, while Kraglin fed him scraps by hand.

The taboo of it invigorated him, lending a sizzling energy to his daydreams. Having his captain on his knees. Bowing his head. Brawny and strong-jawed and deadly, but with the light glancing over his lashes and casting lace-like shadows on his cheeks.

Captain Udonta wasn't shy about what he wanted – but Yondu was content to let Kraglin do with him as he pleased. The contrast was electrifying. Kraglin couldn't get enough of it. He wanted to have Yondu wear his collar on deck, demure to him in front of the crew, flip up Yondu's coat and fuck him over his captain's chair...

No. That was too far – of this, Kraglin was certain. Trust extended both ways. Yondu wouldn't skewer Kraglin and Kraglin wouldn't reveal his secret to the crew. Fair was fair, and all that. For now, he just had to wait.

 

* * *

 

 

The day of their scheduled liaison came and went. After-hours, the time when he'd usually be banging on Yondu's door, Kraglin lay in his bunk, tossing the loupe from hand to hand. He was so lost in his thoughts – which ranged over their usual baseline subjects, when he let his mind meander without direction; the N-stope collapse, the crunch of rock on bone, Yondu whining as Kraglin discovered how much of his cock would fit between those plump blue asscheeks – that he didn't notice the skein of greasy hair dripping over the side of the bunk until Half-nut made a snatch for the loupe.

He missed – or rather, Kraglin's reflexes were faster. Grabbing it out the air with white knuckles, he looked into the face of the half-shaved loon who dwelled in the bunk above.

“What?”

“What?” Half-nut mimicked back at him, followed by a breathy snigger that made hairs raise on Kraglin's arms.

The temperature guage was up to its usual shenanigans; the occupants of this bunk stack were balmy, erring towards a gentle slow-roast, tempered by the occasional blast from the vents over the next stack along, where every man was swaddled in a thermal vest and shivering. Half-nut, bundled in his usual onion-skin of grungey leather, didn't seem to notice the heat – although Kraglin put that down to the half-pack of Snort he'd heard the little tweaker snuffling away at.

“Whassat, Kraggles?” His greedy eyes shone.

“Kraglin,” Kraglin corrected, as usual. He balled the loupe in his fist, the grooves around the bezel cutting between the callouses on his palm. “An' it's mine. Go back to sleep.”

Half-nut shook his head at him like he was stupid. “I don't _sleep,_ ” he said, and tittered high and loud as a venting steam-valve. Kraglin winced, huddling low on his blankets with a nervous glance from side-to-side.

“ _Quiet,_ ya idjit. You wanna wake everyone up?”

“No. I want your shiny thing.”

Kraglin clutched the loupe to his chest, shuffling a little higher on the wall. “You ain't havin' it. Creep.”

Half-nut didn't swing down and prove him wrong. But he did let his face go abnormally blank, an expressionless flesh-mask, which proceeded to dangle upside down over Kraglin long past the time when most normal men would've given up due to head rush.

Kraglin, yawning too hard to scowl, gave in and shoved at him with his boot. Half-nut snorted, jerked, shook himself. And then, eyes still wide, let a snore and a wet string of drool drizzle out his mouth.

Most of it wound up in his nostril. The rest slid until it was suspended on a string, then a sliver, then nothing, plopping to the faraway ground.

Kraglin nudged him again, one knee pulled to his chest with his other leg outstretched. Half-nut's head rolled with the push, cheek squished lax over Kraglin's toecap.

It seemed wrong to shine his boots with any saliva that wasn't Yondu's. When Half-nut slid an inch closer to flopping to his death, Kraglin drew back. He waved in front of those wide eyes.

No recognition. But that didn't mean he wasn't faking it.

Kraglin considered to himself. Then he swung his fist back, and forwards again in a punch.

His knuckles brushed Half-nut's nose. Not a flinch.

Sighing, Kraglin slunk back to his pillow. He curled around it, squeezing its thin, smelly sack, and gave Half-nut another warning glare _just_ in case the asshole was that good an actor, before tucking the loupe in the casing to rest under his stubbled cheek.

He didn't know why he clung to it: that memento from a past life. Things were different now, after all. He had a flame on his sleeve, rather than a pick across his shoulders. Leathers rather than overalls. A captain instead of a foreman – and one who would let Kraglin fuck him, if Kraglin could tamp down his conscience long enough to unroll his dick.

Forget that. Kraglin could barely quiet that itchy niggle in his head long enough to sleep. The one that whispered _this is wrong, what he wants from you is wrong, if you do this you will only be hurting him more._

But Ravagers didn't do therapy. When Kraglin woke up, the shape of the loupe ingrained in his stubble, smacking his lips and grimacing at the taste of his own sour spit, it wasn't to his captain crawling over him, settling on his lap like he did in Kraglin's sleeping mind. A face loomed overhead, but it wasn't Half-Nut's either.

It consolidated into a pink moon, stippled with jet-black tattoos and wreathed in a corona of dirty dreadlocks.

Kraglin's dopey smile dissipated. “Tullk?” he said.

Tullk stopped shaking his boot. “Come on,” he said, gruff and steady as their eye contact. “I need to talk to you.”

Kraglin blinked. “Now?” he asked.

“Now,” Tullk confirmed. When Kraglin didn't immediately hop to obey, his brows lowered, tattoos settling into new abstract shapes. “You disobeyin' an order from your quartermaster, boy? That's a briggin'.”

“N-no. I wasn't disobeyin'. Promise, sir.” Kraglin scuffled his feet free of the blanket, loupe a sharp shape in his hand. He didn't want to reveal his secret cubby, not when Tullk was watching – and not when Half-nut was still dangling over the bedside, eyes glassy but seeing stars-knew how much. Kraglin couldn't stall any longer though, not without risking a trip to the mildewed brig.

He'd only glimpsed it in passing, as Tullk quick-marched them through their tour. It had been lined with cells, he remembered that. Small ones, like the drawers in a morgue, large enough for a man to lay flat in but not to crouch or sit. No chance of standing. Kinda like being first to wriggle into a new cave to set the blasting jelly. Or being trapped under the rocks, screams of your crushed friends ringing through your ears...

Kraglin shuddered. He slipped out his knife and wheedled open the secret panel, shunting the loupe home without casting Tullk a further glance.

“Okay,” he said, slithering for the bed's edge. “Let's go, sir.”

 

* * *

 

 

This time, he wasn't pinned to no walls. Kraglin saw that as a distinct improvement.

Also, rather than being dragged into the nearest dank supply closet for his bollocking, Kraglin was escorted to, of all places, the officers' mess.

It was hardly luxurious. The vast majority of the Ravagers didn't know the meaning of the word, as it had more than two syllables and couldn't be eaten. But it was _clean,_ and free of rust, and there were cushions on the seats. They were silk and satin, stolen from a fancy brothel-ship judging by the emblem crewelled on their fronts in shimmery golden thread. They added a veneer of seedy grandeur to the place, like a vinaigrette on a wilted salad.

Tullk strode to the center of the circle of sofas. He patted the space opposite. Kraglin followed, more cautious. The empty room seemed very large, all of a sudden. While it was tucked away in the ship's center, along with the Bridge and the captain's quarters, it was mostly surrounded by training decks and empty hold space, buffers in case of breach so that the most vital rooms had a heightened chance of survival.

Kraglin wondered if anyone would hear him screaming. Then reassessed, and wondered if anyone would care.

“What d'you want?” he asked, catching his yawn one-handed and remembering to tack on the “sir” as he swung to take his seat. “Is this about...”

 _Is this about you catching the cap'n on my lap while we were waiting for rescue?_ No, that sounded too specific. Like Kraglin was paranoid; like he'd been expecting a fist to swing out of every open door he passed.

“Me an' Yondu again,” he finished lamely, perching with his knees pressed together.

Tullk nodded. Shit.

“But,” he said, before Kraglin could start scoping the exits, “you ain't in trouble, boy.”

That, if anything, made Kraglin more suspicious. “I ain't?”

“Not this time.”

Tullk was a taciturn sort of bloke, when he wasn't strangling you. He let Kraglin simmer for a whole minute, the slimmer man shuffling his feet and never letting his guard drop. He assumed he didn't have the authority to break the silence, although he was burbling with questions – starring such numbers as 'Why would Tullk drag him from his cot halfway through a night-cycle if it wasn't for more threats?' and 'What could he want to talk about involving him and Yondu that didn't involve Kraglin winding up on the wrong side of an airlock?'

But when Tullk restarted, it was with what looked like the attempts of a smile. They twitched at a face so accustomed to being grim and stoic that it was hard to tell, but Kraglin tried to be optimistic.

“Call him 'Captain Udonta', when you're talking to others. You've got to get better at keeping secrets.”

“Keeping secrets? Whaddaya mean, sir? I ain't k-keepin' no secrets here.”

Tullk chuckled. It was a warm sound, rich and bubbling and a helluva lot less filthy than Yondu's. “There, y'see?” he said, treating Kraglin's shoulder to a comradely clap. “Thas what I'm talking about.”

Kraglin swallowed. “I-I still dunno what you're sayin', Mister Quartermaster-sir...”

“I'm talking about you and Yondu.”

Was it just him, or did Tullk's smile look a little strained? The last time Kraglin had seen him and Yondu together, they'd been on bridge. Tullk had been gesticulating wildly, by his standards (i.e., grinding his jaw with frustration). Yondu, in contrast, had been insisting on something unheard. His face had been set in an expression of obstinate, earnest determination that Kraglin had come to dread.

Maybe that had something to do with it.

“I'm talking,” Tullk continued, “about how you stopped him killing Trexi. About how you seem to have... influence.”

Kraglin gulped. “Not much,” he said, screwing his heels onto the polished chrome floor in an effort to ground himself. “An' not all the time. Why you askin', sir?”

"Because, Obfonteri, it would very much help me – help you, help _all of us –_ if you could use that influence to make him see reason.”

A beat.

“Manipulate him, you mean?” Kraglin asked. He said “Sir,” before Tullk could remind him. “I-I ain't sure if thas a good -”

“He's going to get himself killed.”

Kraglin shrugged. “Yondu can look after himself.”

“ _Captain Udonta,_ to you. And that may be so, but he's gonna drag the rest of us down with him. Look, Obfonteri.” Tullk sat back a little, the intense meet of their eyes breaking. Kraglin's lungs remembered how to operate; he sighed his relief. “We've got a good thing going here. Not much, but it keeps us alive an' afloat. Our faction's doubled in numbers since we... left.”

Something told Kraglin that correcting Tullk with 'since we were kicked out' wouldn't be in his best interests.

“We're pulling in bigger jobs, raking in cash," the Quartermaster continued. "If we'd kept on that trajectory, then maybe we'd have a chance, in a decade or so...” He shakes his head. “But Yondu killed the Grober man. Ain't no way that deal is pulling through. We had an opportunity, and he squandered it because... I don't know why. He was acting...”

“Erratically,” Kraglin supplied, proud that he could pronounce the word. Tullk nodded.

“Has been since we... left, to be honest. It's been getting worse though, as of late. The Yondu I followed, the Yondu I left Stakar's crew for, he wouldn't have made a blunder like this. He was too smart. But now?”

Kraglin's mind was whirring double time. “What is it,” he said slowly, feeling out the words, “that Yondu's plannin' sir? Sorry – _Captain Udonta,_ I mean _._ What is it thas got y'all so rattled?”

The jigsaw puzzle had begun to conjoin. Yondu had grown to fill his place in galactic history while running with Stakar's crew. A menace of a man, a demon to be feared. But he'd fallen from grace, and now, it seemed, he was falling apart.

Kraglin had assumed he was second-best option, after Tullk. But perhaps _Tullk_ was second-best, and Kraglin merely third.

Kraglin's jaw dropped.

“It's Stakar,” he whispered, kneading his knobbly knees through the leather. “Shit. He an' Stakar, Stakar an' him... He was his...”

Couldn't finish that thought, not without revealing far too much. Although a part of him suspected Tullk _knew,_ that it was only wilful ignorance that kept him from completing Kraglin's sentence in his stead.

Kraglin gulped “He's gonna fly against him, ain't he? That's why he's gathering recruits, even from slave rings. That's why he's trying to bolster our artillery.”

Tullk didn't deny it. Air collapsed from Kraglin like he'd been pushed into the vacuum.

“God,” he whimpered, dropping his head to dangle, and cradling it in long slim hands. “ _God._ We're all gonna die.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, many thanks to any commenters.


	10. Plots and Plans

Yondu Udonta was a force of fucking nature. This much, Kraglin had discerned. A maelstrom of a man, a typhoon in humanoid form who had thundered into Kraglin's life and wrenched it all apart.

Kraglin had welcomed the chaos, at first. Now though? Now it terrified him.

Yondu was crazy. Stone-cold insane.

That typhoon had descended into a whirlpool, one that would suck him down, swallow ship and crew in its entirety – unless Kraglin could somehow snatch the reins.

He stood in front of Yondu's door, fist upraised to knock. Something was holding him back. It wasn't fear, or pride – Kraglin recognized the necessity of this, which dimmed the first and negated the second. It was more... a sense of wrongness.

You didn't control forces of nature, after all. You certainly didn't collar them, bend them, try to break them to your will.

His knock faltered. This was for the best – because next moment the door slid open in a wheeze of decompressing air, and Yondu himself filled the gap. Quill was visible under his arm. The kid's eyes, when they turned to see the intruder, were as pink as Yondu's. He looked like he'd been crying.

Kraglin blinked. “The hell's going on?”

“None of yer business,” Yondu barked, at the same time as Quill said, in a voice that quavered as much as his shuddering little shoulders:

“Cap'n's getting rid of me.”

“Gettin' rid of ya?”

“I said,” Yondu repeated, grin so wide and fake it became more of a grimace, “it ain't none of yer business, Obfonteri. Now scat.”

“No, wait. Whaddaya mean, kid?”

Quill sniffled. “I mean he's selling me to whoever'll have me.”

Kraglin's jaw dropped. That couldn't be right. Yondu was capable of a helluva lot of awful, but _this..._

Yondu snorted, thwapping Quill upside the head. Kraglin took the opportunity to sidle inside, pressing the clamper closed so the seal hissed behind him.

“Idjit. I'm puttin' him up for adoption, is all. Gonna drop him off at the nearest Nova base, make sure he's looked after, all official-like.” He scoffed at Quill's wibbling chin. “Honestly, brat. Musta told ya a million times not to exaggerate.”

He said it without a trace of irony. But it wasn't that which Kraglin's mind latched onto. _Adoption._

“What?” he sputtered, head swinging between them like he was following an Orloni being batted between two larger beasts. “ _What?_ You're sending him to a Xandarian orphanage, or some shit?”

“No,” said Quill, through his wobbly lips. He clutched the Walkman hard enough that his grip squeaked off the plastic buttons. “No, he ain't. He ain't sending me away – this's my home too -”

Yondu sneered. “First time you've called it that. Face it, kid. Y'ain't cut out for this life. Right mighty pain in my ass to boot. Fact o'the matter is, yer years with me've been a trial run. Now? Trial's over. You failed. So _scat._ ”

Each sentence delivered like a punch. Quill certainly looked as if the words had been physical blows. He crumpled over his precious music box, shoulders shaking as he swallowed down the sobs. He wasn't letting himself cry, not overtly. In Kraglin's mind, there was no surer sign of a Ravager.

He cleared his throat. “Cap'n's lyin',” he said.

Yondu span on him. “Shaddup -”

“N-n-no he ain't.” Quill screwed his balled up fist over his lashes, dashing away tears. “I-i-it's true. I'm useless. I'm no space pirate, I'm n-not, I'm not _Star-Lord..._ ”

Oh hell. Let this drag out much longer, the room would overflow with brine and Terran snot. Kraglin sighed. “He's trying to protect you,” he explained, ignoring the seething blue idjit behind him. “He's about to do somethin' real stupid, y'see. An' while he's too flarkin' dumb to admit it, he doesn't want ya hurt.”

“I said shaddup.” Yondu spat the words like they were snake venom. “You don't know me. You don't know shit...”

Kraglin didn't let him continue. “I know who you are,” he said. It wasn't a trump card so much as a statement: a simple and un-ornamented fact. “I know what you need. And I know this is a shitty idea, goin' against Stakar -”

Quill's mouth dropped wide. “You're fighting that Rambo dude?” His bleat was of a pitch with Yondu's whistle. He didn't seem to notice Kraglin's confusion, scowling at Yondu with hands parked on his skinny adolescent hips. “But you've always said that's too dangerous!”

“It is,” Kraglin confirmed. Yondu glared daggers, javelins, and plasma bolts at him, and made to open his mouth. An upraised finger stopped him though – not that Kraglin had time to savor that thrill, the odd sense of gratification that came from Yondu's uncharacteristic deferral. “Which is why he's trying to get you off ship. So he doesn't feel guilty about leading you to die.”

“Oh.” Quill pondered this a minute. Then nodded to himself, clicking his Walkman on and off again in a gesture that looked more habitual than conscious. “Okay. So if I stay on ship, Yondu can't go kill himself?”

Kraglin knew the kid had a smart streak. He grinned at him, and while Quill seemed mildly offput by his tin eyeteeth, he was a Ravager. He'd seen worse. “ _Exactly._ Off ya trot, kiddo. I'll deal with the captain.”

The captain didn't look too happy about this. But he also wasn't whistling and, in the jittering mess of Kraglin's brain, which was at once delighted at his control over this situation and terrified of it, that was a good thing. Yondu _wanted_ to be talked out of this. He was many things, but suicidal wasn't one of them. This was a move borne of desperation. Need for attention. Attention of what kind – well, only Kraglin knew that.

Quill shuffled his feet only a moment, before deciding with the naïve speed of a child that Kraglin could be trusted. “See you at dinner!” he called, bundling his walkman into his pants pocket. Heaving the door open with a pull that utilized his entire bodyweight – and shaking his head at Kraglin's half-hearted offer of assistance – the Terran jogged down the corridor backwards, one hand cupped around his mouth to aim his shout: “Don't let him send me to Xandar!”

“You ain't goin' nowhere,” Kraglin said. He sounded more reassuring than he felt. Who's to say that Yondu wouldn't skewer him the moment the brat was out the way, in punishment for undermining his authority?

But Yondu simply stormed past him to slam the door, before stomping to the bed and flinging himself on it hard enough to bounce a pillow off the opposite side.

 _Like a stroppy breaker boy,_ Kraglin's mind filled in, and he smirked to himself at the comparison.

“I don't want no lectures,” said his captain into the sheet. Kraglin had to replay the muffled lisp in his head three times to understand it, but once he had it, he nodded. “I've made up my mind. Stakar's gotta die.”

“Why?”

“Kicked me out.”

“Five years ago. Maybe more – my timeline's kinda iffy.”

“He's a douche.” A baleful red eye cracked open and glared at him over the creases in the bedclothes. “And you ain't callin' me sir.”

Kraglin licked his lips. His hands fell from their at-ease and he stood as tall as he could, craning his nose bridge for the ceiling. “I know,” he said.

Yondu's visible pupil dilated, engulfing his crimson iris like a solar eclipse. “Ya gave me an order.”

Anticipation crackled under Kraglin's skin. He slunk forwards a step, knee knocking the mattress between Yondu's grubby boot soles. “I know.”

“Ya said we weren't gonna do this no more. Not unless I read the-”

“Well. Have ya?”

Yondu wasn't much of a blusher, but Kraglin's blunt interrogation turned his ear tips a truly magnificent royal blue. Kraglin made it his mission then and there to see that color as much as possible. “Most of it.”

“Well then.” Kraglin ran over his next words several times, start to finish, before baring them to the air. He prayed the scenario would play as smoothly in actuality as it did in his imagination. “I want you to stand up, go to yer desk, bend over it, and drop yer pants.”

Yondu blinked. Not a snap-shot flick of his lashes: something slower, hungrier. “Or what,” he breathed.

Kraglin was ready for this. His numb fingers twitched. He'd attend to his poor circulation later. For now, there were matters of a more pressing urgency, for which his hands were required.

“Or I give you fifty spanks, ‘stead of twenty-five.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The medibead had done its job – the graze from the crash didn't encumber Yondu in the slightest, and when Kraglin eased his captain's shirt up a fraction, he saw fresh-healed skin, a little softer and paler than the surrounds. It wouldn't take a battering, but at least it wasn't sensitive to the point of pain.

Yondu's ass, on the other hand, was made of tougher stuff.

Kraglin flexed the ache away as best he could, flipflopping his palm at the end of his wrist. He slouched, shuffling the chair in on its rollers and nudging Yondu's legs apart with his knees. The captain stood straddling his lap, resting on his elbows with his head dangling. Each keen of his breath mottled the piles of palm-held infonet surfers with puffs of smoke-white humidity. Too much of that and he'd fritz the circuits – but right now, Kraglin couldn't bring himself to care.

“I think,” he said, praising the stars when he managed to maintain a steady voice, “that ya oughta drop yer underwears for the last ten.”

Yondu's implant met the desk with a thud. Before Kraglin could enquire whether he was alright, he reached behind himself to hook his holey waistband.

Kraglin was too indecisive for this sort of thing. Should he leave Yondu to sort himself out for the joy of watching him struggle, as he shimmied the underwears a little lower on his hips, revealing a pert blue swell? Or should he wrench the tattered things on their way and being done with it?

If Yondu needed someone to take charge, take charge Kraglin would. He decided on the former option, and made sure Yondu heard his chuckle when he finally hooked the crusty fabric under his cheeks, elastic pinning his plump thighs together.

Kraglin gave him a squeeze. Yondu's ass had deepened from bright to royal blue, navy dappling where Kraglin's spread fingers had swatted again and again. The bruises looked puffy and purpled, a memento to remind Yondu of their lesson whenever he sat.

Kraglin could only pray that it would be enough.

“Y'remember the word?”

“Still think it's stupid to have one -”

“Didn't ask for yer opinion, did I?” Kraglin had been prime backtalker in the tunnels; he drew on that well of experience now. It was harder, to usurp the authority of someone you appreciated, even grudgingly respected (regardless of whether you wanted to bash their head off the nearest wall for trying to get himself and everyone around him dead).

But Yondu didn't _want_ to be in control. Not here. Kraglin justified the reversal of their power dynamic with a choice of passages scrounged direct from the manual – _The submissive allows the dominant power over them, but they command that power's flow. Should they indicate a cessation of the scene, the scene is over._

Yondu still held the reins. And while Kraglin suspected a dark part of his captain didn't want to; that he genuinely wanted to be held down and made to enjoy it; Kraglin couldn't do that to him. Not even if it meant forfeiting the ship, the crew, Yondu himself – all eradicated in the blaze of Ogord's solar wings.

He just had to hope that this – the piebald dapple of bruises on Yondu's ass; the high grate of his breathing – was enough.

“Do you remember yer word?” he asked again. 

Yondu quaked, implant screeching on the tabletop. He nodded.

“Good. Now count yer spanks for me out loud, from one. Goddit?”

Yondu nodded again. The crack of a palm on his buttock had him groaning.

“Count?” Kraglin prompted, pausing on the backswing.

“O-one...”

“Good boy.”

It was a script, he discovered. Order, praise, order, punish, repeat. So long as he followed it, so long as he never allowed the self-doubt in his gut to erode the confidence he projected, Yondu could let himself float. And Kraglin, delivering second and third spanks, all the way through to eighth, kept him there to the best of his ability.

“Ready,” he breathed, hand at the zenith of his swing. Nearly there: this was the penultimate before the finale, the entree that preceded dessert.

Yondu shivered. His ass flaunted forty-eight prints, which varied in palette and vibrancy, each depicting a rough outline of Kraglin's palm. When Kraglin landed the forty-ninth, ripples spread across both cheeks.

Yondu _moaned._ Long and lusty, rocking his hips against the desk. Kraglin blew on the tender skin; relished the whimper. “Say it,” he said. “You ain't lost count, have ya? Don't want me to start again...”

Had he issued that ultimatum at the start of their scene, Yondu would've disobeyed just to make him live up to his threat. Now though, he'd sunk a step closer to that slack-jawed obedience the manual described, the place Yondu was chasing so desperately, where he would exist only to fulfil Kraglin's whims.

“Nine,” he mumbled, slurring the consonants. A drool-string joined his lips to the PADD he was using as a pillow. “ _Please..._ ”

That word hit Kraglin like a shot of Snort.

“Good boy,” he said, more a growl than anything, and smacked Yondu hard enough to clonk his hips off the table, stomach squashing over the desk's edge. Then, once Yondu had recovered enough to wheeze his “ten” - “Are ya still gonna fly against Stakar?”

Yondu's back was heaving, face a blotchy navy. But infiltrating the dark blush were the jagged lines of a grin.

“Course I am,” he drawled. “Gonna make him pay for leavin' me. S'the Ravager way.”

Kraglin felt sick. His stinging hand crushed in on itself in a furious fist. “This why you've been gathering plasma canons, striking deals with Grober, taking on new recruits? All to go out in a bang?”

“Ain't gettin' no fireworks over my grave. Figure explosion's next best way to go.”

“You're crazy.”

That earned a full-out guffaw. “An yer still here! Ain't abandoned ship yet, though there's escape pods for the takin'. Figure that makes you crazy too.”

Kraglin regretted having Yondu straddle him, if only because it made it impossible for him to strain in the opposite direction – or, for that matter, ignore the warm cock that rested on his thigh. Yondu faced away, smirk aimed at the far wall. But those infernal red eyes of his latched onto Kraglin's in the cracked shell of a PADD-case, half-obscured by the smattering of plastic tourist tat on top.

Kraglin drained the spit from the back of his throat, gulping for so long he was afraid he'd choke on it. “I can't leave," he said. "You'd kill me before I took a step."

Yondu's chuckle was sweet as rot. “Yer a smart one.”

“You're _really crazy._ ”

“Naw. Crazy'd be tellin' ya what I'm doin' when there's a chance you can stop it.” Yondu's eyes flicked to the entrance Quill had left through, and Kraglin swore he saw regret there, regret and fear, before he forced them back to Kraglin. Was it just his imagination, or was that smile strained, veering on manic? One thing was for sure, and that was that Yondu's eyes were more eloquent than his mouth could ever be: a silent and plaintive entreaty.

He _wanted_ Kraglin to stop him.

“Obfonteri, we're already en route. I got Horuz to wait round the corner with a tranq gun. Kid's headed to Xandar, whether he wants it or otherwise.”

Kraglin's stomach plunged like the ground had crumpled from under him. “Fire up your comm,” he said. He cast a dull eye around the gubbins that piled in the corners of Yondu's room like bones at the bottom of a mine shaft, voice as hollow as his heart. “An' find yer collar. Yer takin' the day off.”

  
  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so incredibly grateful to those who commented on the last chapter, and as usual, I'm apologizing for the awful wait between updates...

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are nice. Kudos are lovely. Thank you for each and every one.


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